Notes
A list of lists: in his book Keep Going, Austin Kleon writes about a variety of types of lists you might keep and I made a list of them:
- to-do
- to-make (he says to-draw)
- to-learn
- Someday/Maybe
- to-not-do
- pro/con
- thanks for/help me
- end-of-year
- commandments
New bio on most of my profiles: Mom & PhD with a librarian’s heart and an academic’s mind. I manage multiple chronic illnesses and I love books and games. 🌈♿
📓 I know Twitter is all the things we all know it is now but I still love that some scholars wrote a journal article about the relationship between emojis and identity in Twitter bios.
📺🍿🎄 Watched Reporting for Christmas.
I really like this one. A hard-hitting Chicago reporter heads to a small town in Iowa to cover the 40th anniversary of the local toy company’s most popular product. Life changes ensue.
Super cute, winning cast.
Me: I’ll put this little tumbled sodalite crystal on my bedside table, it will make me happy.
The Kitten: Ooh a new toy!
💬
“Recover yourself. That’s where your creativity is.”
Kate McKean in today’s Agents & Books Q&A issue.
I was thinking about Austin Kleon’s urging to show your work and I thought, “But Austin, what do I do when I don’t even feel up to making things to show my work on?” and then I thought, “Well he already told me: Keep going.”
🔖Read Twenty Rules for the New Escribitionist.
23 and a half-year-old blogging advice that is still pretty solid.
I’ve had kimberlyhirsh.com for fifteen years today. I had other domains before that. I’m really glad I claimed this one. It’s been great for me both personally and professionally.
🔖 Read You Can’t Unsubscribe from Grief by Jenessa Abrams (Electric Literature).
This is a gorgeous essay. I really needed it right now.
📺🍿🎄 Watched A Biltmore Christmas.
Mostly for Jonathan Frakes & Robert Picardo 🖖🏻 but I ended up really liking it. There’s a lot of 40s Hollywood glamor. Also, I love Biltmore. I’ve been there only twice but I still love it.
Well, it’s taken more than 7 years, but it’s finally happened: my child’s taste has completely eclipsed mine in my Spotify Wrapped.
📺🍿🎄 In the movie A Timeless Christmas, I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that a man time-traveled from 1903 to 2020, but asking me to accept that his love interest is a shoe-in for a history faculty job simply by virtue of having a PhD is a bridge too far.
🍿📺🎄 Watched A Christmas Frequency. A radio producer sets her show’s host up on on-air blind dates to save the show from the slump it’s in because the host is no fun after separating from her husband. It’s not a solid movie but I liked it because the cast is adorable.
💻 Recently my less-than-alma mater asked, “Remember the 90s at Carolina?
I didn’t get there until 1999 so I had different things in my metaphorical Carolina Jeep.
📺🍿🎄 By the way, time travel is a whole subgenre of holiday made-for-TV movie. See:
- Eve’s Christmas (yes, that IS Amber from Clueless!)
- Back to Christmas (featuring Veronica Mars’s Michael Muhney and 1990s Jan Brady!)
- Christmas Comes Twice (Tamera Mowry!)
- A Timeless Christmas
📺🍿🎄 I was watching Hulu’s A Christmas Frequency and everything was going great but then it shattered my suspension of disbelief by having one guy give another guy an expense report, printed on paper.
🍿 Saw Wish. A story full of good ideas. Music nice but not as memorable as, say, Encanto. Chris Pine is, of course, a delight. Full of beautifully casual representation.
📝 Jami Attenberg in today’s Craft Talk newsletter:
it’s important to write the things you can write.
Today in Year of Making, LEGO set 40658, Millennium Falcon Holiday Diorama.
Anybody know if there are vampire stories, in any medium, that address the question of neuroplasticity? I feel like an animated corpse shouldn’t have it, but it seems like it’d be useful to help you make the most of your potentially very long life.
Finished reading: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 📚
A bunch of excellent and chilling stories. Horror and make it literary. Uncertainty that is maddening but then that’s kind of the point.
I just want to be able to feel grief in my heart and also sleep. It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask but my body disagrees.
It’s never too late to start a year of making, so here I am starting my Year of Making 2023 on November 20. This is the Goldberry shawl, designed by Michele DuNaier in Lion Brand TruBoo in the Goldenrod colorway. The pattern contains many delightful Lord of the Rings references.
