Kimberly Hirsh

I have a lot of friends, but the circle of friends I think of as my people is much smaller. If I make a list, it’s probably maybe 10 or so people right now, though the circle has porous boundaries.

This morning I sent something Austin Kleon wrote to a friend with the note “This seems like something you’d appreciate.” Sometimes my friends send me things that remind them of me.

Sometimes there’s an obvious reason, like when anyone sends my sister red panda stuff or me mermaid things.

But my favorite times are when it’s about a vibe. That feels to me like accessing the ineffable core of a relationship that I always imagine you can only get at after a very intense initial period of friendship, unless you happen to be friends with a literal horse, in which case it happens instantly because horses just understand you.

There’s a sort of distance that I think makes this kind of thing easier. My dearest friends all live far away. I think it facilitates finding this kind of thing. I want to be in the lookout for more opportunities to do it for my most inner circle, my innest circle? My spouse, my child, my household of origin.

Do your people have vibes that give you shortcuts to letting them know you’re thinking of them?

🔖 How to Write a Novel (Or Anything, Really) with ADHD

Lots of helpful ideas for people who, like myself, struggle to finish writing long things.

🔖 Read Instagram Makes Parents Feel More Clueless Than We Really Are by Elisabeth Sherman (Catapult).

Great piece. Every time I think I’m parenting M wrong, if I just listen to him & follow my intuition, I’ll beat anything influencers can tell me.

Thanks to Ransom on Lower Decks, I now notice every time Riker has his foot up on furniture on TNG. 🖖🏻

📺💬 On MythicQuest…

Ian: Poppy, lines are so Web1. You don’t wanna be in Web1, do you?

Me: I do! I love Web1!

It’s Sunday morning and I am back to being overwhelmed by meal planning, how’s your day? I should say that M & I made banana bread and pumpkin bread this morning, so that’s lovely.

It turns out giving yourself credit for everything you write is actually really challenging because you have to pull it all together somewhere, and sometimes you lose track of the last thing you counted.

It’s far too early to give up on NaNoWriMo.

But have y’all noticed that November is a really hard time to write in the Northern hemisphere? There’s the time change. The lack of light because of it. If you’re in the US, Thanksgiving eats up fully 5 days it feels like. (That’s 17% of your writing time!) At least it does in my family.

It’s just a brutal time!

This is why I like Camp NaNoWriMo. Especially July. July, if you work in education and can afford to send your kid to camp, is a great time to write.

Anyway. I’m not giving up on NaNo but I’m also not trying to do word counts on all my texts.

The only time I won NaNo, I wrote 25K words on November 30.

I’ve won Camp NaNo a few times with smaller goals.

I do want to write. I don’t know what a good writing goal, process, or practice looks like for me. Maybe I’ll take the rest of this month to figure it out.

📚💬 “Proximity to power, however real that feels, is a simpler choice than solidarity. True allyship lives in relationships, true solidarity requires giving up some comfort, material resources, and power—and sharing it with others.” Angela Garbes, Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

💬📚 “The perspective mothers bring to their jobs—whether it’s law making, coalition building, project management—is that family and care work are essential to life, not an inconvenience.” Angela Garbes, Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

💬📚 “We are entrusting that which we say is most precious—our children, our future— to other people, yet we are not willing to pay them a living wage? What does that say about our priorities as a society? Our priorities as individuals?” Angela Garbes, Essential Labor Mothering as Social Change