Kimberly Hirsh

Greetings from our spring break staycation.

In November or December, I choose a word for the next year. Then for the first quarter of the new year, I try it out and see if it actually fits. If it doesn’t, I pick a new word to coincide with the spring equinox, the start of the western astrological year.

At the end of 2024, frustrated by the fact that all I did was work, sleep, read, and play video games, I chose the word “More” for 2025. I wanted to do more, connect more, pursue more.

But that’s not the word I’m finding myself living.

My new word for 2025 is “Enough.” Enough is the spirit of harm reduction. It’s enough to feed myself, even if what I feed myself is not what I have in the moments of my richest nutritional profile. It’s enough to do my job and keep myself and my child going.

Two books are really helping me feel into enough, even though I haven’t finished either of them yet:

• How to Keep House While Drowning by K. C. Davis
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

And in the spirit of enough, I’ve decided this blog post is long enough.

“…what we think of as ‘distractions’ aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

📚💬 “…if you’re procrastinating on something because you’re worried you won’t do a good enough job, you can relax—because judged by the flawless standards of your imagination, you definitely won’t do a good enough job. So you might as well make a start.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

EveryLibrary has created a tool you can use to send an email to your legislators and governors urging them to support federal funding for Libraries. Libraries could see downstream impacts from Trump’s Executive Order as soon as this Friday.

📚💬 " The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things." Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

🔖 Book Riot’s Literary Activism Newsletter explains: Library Funding Targeted in New Trump Executive Order: What It Means & What To Do Now.

I was looking at my On This Day page, reading an old post I wrote that’s especially thoughtful and in-depth about improv, and it struck me that I don’t think that deeply anymore. I miss it.

But I do think that deeply at work, I’m just not blogging about it. May be time to start blogging that stuff.

🔖 Read The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion? by Oliver Burkeman (The Guardian).

I’m trying to find a space where determinism and existentialism co-exist. I just keep coming back to the line from the TV show Angel: “if nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.”

Finished reading: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis 📚

The first novella in a series of three. At first I thought it might not be the right moment for me to read this, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The payoff is great.