I’m sure there are grad students for whom a list of ways to stay productive right now might be useful, but I am not one of them.

I just DMed 6 cosplayers on Instagram to invite them to participate in my study. 5 were in person acquaintances, 1 was recommended by a friend. Feels like I’m actually, you know, gonna do research!

Sometimes, as an exercise to give me insight into what I should be focusing on, where I should put my attention, whenever I’m choosing an activity rather than fulfilling an obligation, I ask myself, What would I do if money were no object?

For at least a few years now, maybe longer, the answer has been that I would learn in public. That’s it. My perfect day would be that I would get up, have a walk and breakfast with my family, take my kid to school, then pop on a podcast about whatever I’m learning, go home and spend the morning writing about what I learned yesterday, and the afternoon learning some more: reading or listening or watching or, most importantly, practicing whatever my new thing is. And then I’d get the kid, and we’d learn something together, and then maybe go for another walk, and have dinner as a family. And then I’d play games of some sort, and eventually I’d go to bed.

It’s kind of amazing that I just banged out that perfect day so quickly, because I’ve been thinking about the perfect day exercise for years, and been stumped, and just now as I was writing about learning in public I realized that this is it.

Something else I’ve been moving toward and that really gelled for me this morning is the idea that, even though money is an object, I can still learn in public. Whatever new thing I’m doing, I can write about it.

And then, of course, I realized that I’ve actually been doing that for years, too.

Hm. And oh hey, look, when I first bought the domain name kimberlyhirsh.com, I even said that the whole point of the thing was to write about what I’m learning.

But now I’m going to do it a little more deliberately, I think. A bit more consciously. I’m toying with the idea of doing something like they do on the By the Book podcast, picking a domain and then within that domain picking a book or website or whatever and then applying everything I learn from that resource, and blogging about it the whole way. We’ll see. I’m starting with Jeff Goins’s book, You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One). He said, “Commit to writing something–anything–today. Maybe… Write it just to get it out. Right. Now.” And here we are.

🎮 I think Tifa is my fave now? I always liked her, but now I like her best?

🎮 It’s happening.

Facebook Live museum tours on my calendar today, The Dark Crystal exhibit at the Center for Puppetry Arts and Tim Burton at the Neon Museum.

Because it’s seasonally appropriate, today we’re listening to Christo Graham’s Muppet Christ Superstar.

Guess I have to not Internet until after our copy of FF7R gets here… See y’all later, probably with lots of thoughts on books I’m reading to take my mind off not having the video game, I guess?

📺 My wishlist for Picard Season 2:

1. Geordi
2. More Spot II

Feeling like hiding today, but I worked on recruiting for my dissertation and put my CV on kimberlyhirsh.com. Also tried avocado-based chocolate “ice cream” and it was delicious. I radically prefer it to any other non-dairy frozen dessert. Marco Polo continues to make me happy because it’s kind of like texting with somebody’s face and voice. Plans for future blog posts include continuing my series of Steal Like an Artist for scholars (and then moving on to Show Your Work and Keep Going), advice on streaming aquarium cams, and watching Groundhog Day.