Kimberly Hirsh

Here are a pair of blog posts that ended up in conversation with each other in my brain because I read them both this morning in quick succession.

CJ Chilvers asks, “What’s with the hostility towards personal publishing?

And it’s almost as if Seth Godin answers, “The Coney Island problem.”

Chilvers says:

our innate trust in individuals over brands will determine the winners of both attention and revenue. Everyone in media should be racing to become a trusted individual right now.

and Godin points out:

We’d like to believe that we prefer to walk down the picturesque street, visiting one merchant after another, buying directly from the creator or her gallery. We’d like to think that the centralized antiseptic option isn’t for us… And yet, when the supermarche opens in rural France, it does very well. It turns out that we respond well to large entities that pretend that they’re simply a conglomeration of independent voices and visions, but when masses of people are given a choice, they’re drawn to the big guy, not the real thing.

Where does this leave personal publishing and blogging? I’m not sure. But I think it’s an interesting question and an interesting thing to think about. I suppose a lot of it comes back to that old question, why blog? Are we doing it for ourselves or for our readers? I find that even when I don’t mean to, I tend to blog for my future self. And future me would rather hear what past me has to say from me, rather than an LLM trained to sound like me and everyone else. That said, I am intrigued by the idea of training an LLM on my own diary and journal entries and blog posts and then having a conversation with my younger self, like Michelle Huang did. In fact, I think I’ll try it now.

edited to add: I tried it, but because I don’t have a payment method in OpenAI it didn’t let me do it. Ah well. I guess I’ll just have to extrapolate from old blog posts and LiveJournal entries what a younger me would have said.

I’m typing this blog post in Google Docs, because of its autosave feature. There’s probably a better way, but oh well. I kind of want to just type it in the Micro.blog compose box but I’m so afraid of losing it.

Why am I so afraid of losing it? If I have to re-write a blog post, isn’t that kind of a feature rather than a bug? I don’t know. Maybe another day I’ll try typing directly into Micro.blog.

I thought about writing my blog posts over at 750words but some days I might want to write fewer than 750 words and I shouldn’t let the desire or need to write less get in the way of writing at all.

I look a three hour nap today. I lay down, set an alarm for when I needed to be awake to drive safely to pick the kid up from camp, and then told myself if I got up earlier, great, and surely I would get up earlier.

I did not get up earlier.

Lindsay Mack sent out a special email about Solstice Medicine with a Tarot spread for the solstice for artists, and I think I’ll do that spread in a little bit. I think I’ll use both the Moonchild Tarot AND the Ocean Dreams oracle deck maybe? I’m not sure.

I might just do it with Ocean Dreams, even though it’s not a Tarot deck. Maybe I’ll try that and then see if I also want to pull out the Moonchild Tarot.

I’ve decided that today is the day to handle All the Things related to my sister’s baby shower, which will be a week from tomorrow. I did a tour of the venue (which I’ve been to before both for a party and because it’s part of the site where M did preschool & kindergarten). I’m talking to my co-host and hopefully we’ll settle activities and food. I’ve got an Amazon cart full of decorations and tableware. The theme is Baby Dragons. The decor is adorable. I won’t be sad when it’s over. Party planning for more than 12 guests is apparently more than I feel good about these days.

It’s the summer solstice and tomorrow we’ll have a Strawberry Moon.

Here are some rambling thoughts on things that have captured my attention lately.

I was saddened to hear of the death of Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, whose book Blue Mind I purchased as an impulse buy in the South Carolina Aquarium gift shop. The book is great and I look forward to reading the tenth anniversary edition when it’s released. I can’t figure out where I put my copy of it.

Back in May I put a hold on the library copy of Adam Higginbotham’s book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. I picked it up today.

I’ll write a longer post about the book later, but I watched the failed Challenger launch out of my bedroom window. I was four years old. I remember the visual. I was in the habit of watching shuttle launches out of that window, and there were a lot of launches in the early and mid-80s. I lived about 34 miles away from Cape Canaveral as the crow flies. I don’t remember any other launch, of course.

That launch has shaped my psyche in ways I’m still unpacking almost 40 years later, and when I saw that this book had been published and was well-reviewed, I wanted to read it because I wanted answers, answers beyond the technical, about what contributed to this event that has so shaped my thinking. Spiritual answers, even.

About 30 pages into the book, I am seeing the beginnings of those answers, which tend to be the answers when we ask these kinds of questions about any human-made disaster: greed and hubris. Greed and hubris are the forces that bring about these kinds of disasters.

More on this and my memories of Challenger after I’ve read more of the book or finished it if I decide to finish it. (It’s a doorstop and my attention span for non-fiction is limited lately.)

I really like chocolate. I’m waiting to hear from some headache specialists that my doctor faxed a referral form to but it’s been many weeks, maybe even a couple months, so I might start looking for other options to discuss with her the next time we talk.

I love my kid, my heart is so full, and seven-year-olds have big, big feelings,

I feel like I’m only talking about stuff that isn’t the most fun here, but I am still loving reading romance, deriving great joy from the Fated Mates podcast and its Discord server, and I’m enjoying playing Harvest Moon for the SNES.

🎉 It’s Juneteenth! The National Museum of African-American History and Culture interviewed the museum’s curators about Juneteenth and shared what they had to say in three posts:

1. What is Juneteenth?
2. Who Celebrates Juneteenth?
3. Why is Juneteenth Important?

🤎🖤

Finished reading: The Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole 📚

I do love a sailor heroine.

Finished reading: If You Desire by Kresley Cole 📚

Somehow forgot to post this when I finished it. It was my favorite of the MacCarrick Brothers trilogy.

Hey Internet in general and Micro.blog specifically! I was on vacation and away from much of the Internet from 6/8 - 6/15. Is there anything I missed that you think I should know about?

Finished reading: If You Deceive by Kresley Cole 📚

Finished reading: If You Dare by Kresley Cole 📚

Want to read: Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success by Christine M. Larson 📚

Finished reading: The Devil of Downtown by Joanna Shupe 📚

Another excellent Gilded Age historical romance.

🔖📺 Read The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice.

For 20 years, I couldn’t say what I watched the former president do on the set of the show that changed everything. Now I can.

Woof. I don’t think stories like this will move the needle for Trump supporters, because I don’t really think anything will move the needle for Trump supporters.

But I kind of hope they turn some non-voters into voters.

Oh the irony of being unable to go to the pharmacy to pick up your (my) migraine meds because you (I) have a migraine. (Please do not recommend migraine treatments at this time, thank you.)

Finished reading: Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun 📚

This made me bawl. I love a childhood best friends to enemies to lovers story, and this one is about English teachers and their mentor English teacher and love through decades.

Today:

• woke up way too early
• read about Romance Writers of America filing for bankruptcy and the absurd way they’re trying to blame it on Courtney Milan 🔖📚
• had my first mammogram (later than I ought) (they used cute stickers to mark my sebaceous cysts)
• caught up on Season 3 of Bridgerton 📺

🎮 Played Assemble with Care.

I’m really feeling wholesome games lately, especially those with a warm pastel color palette and soothing music. In this game, you fix people’s stuff and inspire them to fix their relationships.

On sale on Steam for $3.19 through June 11, iOS & Android for $3.99.

Finished reading: The Essential X-Men Volume 3 by Chris Claremont 📚

Read as single issues and only the Uncanny X-Men books, not the annuals, but this is the easiest way to track reading the comics.

Midnight is very sleepy.

Finished reading: The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe 📚

I loved it. A delightful heroine, a debutante with dreams of owning a women-only casino. The bitter casino owner she’s chosen to mentor her. Excellent stuff.

Finished reading: The Rogue of Fifth Avenue by Joanna Shupe 📚

Gilded Age New York, a hotshot lawyer, and a responsible eldest daughter who finds her responsibility chafing. What’s not to love?

That feeling when you went to the pool with children and you only had snacks for lunch and your knee hurts and you’re ready for bed at 3:30. Hashtag relatable. Am I right?

I’m attending FanLIS this morning. This is my favorite little academic space: the intersection of fan studies and library & information science. I probably won’t be live-posting but I’ll take some notes to share.

Whoops, I was too busy actually paying attention to FanLIS to take notes. Also, it turns out virtual conferences are much less exhausting when you’re not liveblogging them.

Finished reading: Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover by Sarah MacLean 📚

This has my favorite of Sarah MacLean’s heroes. Give me a guy who is clever and made his own way over a titled rogue any day. (But I like to read about titled rogues, too.)

Finished reading: The Essential X-Men Volume 2 by Chris Claremont 📚

Again, read as single issues in Marvel Unlimited, but this is the best way to track. It’s a powerhouse of a run with both Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past in it.