Kimberly Hirsh

🔖 I’m genuinely thrilled for the Gen Zers and others who have the energy for a weekly everything shower, but this chronically ill Xennial is pretty sure it would use up all of her spoons.

If you like analog tools, you probably want to sign up for @cygnoir’s analog meetup.

I do so like when other people, like @cygnoir, write week notes, so I thought I’d give it a try.

On New Year’s Day, my little household made our way over to my parents’ house for chili and board games. We played Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, a cute party game. We also played Chutes & Ladders: Marvel Super Hero Squad, because that is the one game M will play by the actual rules.

We watched Beware the Groove, a documentary my brother made about the making of The Emperor’s New Groove. It’s super cool and I’m proud of him. If you like The Emperor’s New Groove, animation, or movies in general, you should try it out.

M was back on campus Tuesday for a day camp before school officially started on Wednesday. Tuesday evening, I attended a webinar about Quaker education. M attends a Quaker school and I really hope to work there, so this was a very valuable session for me to attend.

Wednesday, I had the last team meeting for my postdoc. The report we’ve been working on for a long time is still in progress. My colleagues will be finishing it. (This is a useful example of the impact of funding: the people who wrote the grant had originally written my postdoc as a 3 year postdoc, but when the program officer told them they needed to cut costs in their proposal, they cut the third year. And now there’s no one whose job it is to work on the project full-time anymore, so it has to take a back seat to other projects.)

I’ll be first author on the report whenever it’s actually published, so that’s nice.

Thursday was a quiet day. M resumed his musical theater dance class, which he started only because a friend was doing it but now says he really enjoys.

Friday was another quiet day. Which is good, because Saturday was a big day!

We went to the NC Chinese Lantern Festival. It’s always beautiful, but this year was extra magical because in honor of the Year of the Dragon, there were many beautiful dragons hanging out in crystal forests.

There were also a lot of Monkey King-themed lanterns.

To get a sense of the whole experience, take a look at the online program.

Sunday was another quiet day which was literally sorely needed, as my body didn’t like me asking it to do so much walking around at the festival, so Sunday was a high pain day. (It’s also possible there was some unexpected corn flour in something I ate.)

And that’s week 1 of 2024!

🍿 Watched It’s Complicated. Happy to have watched. It seemed to me mostly to be about how a manbaby doesn’t want to contribute to his new family and tries to get his ex-wife to take care of him now that she’s an empty nester and won’t need his help. Spoiler: it doesn’t work.

High pain day today.

Finished reading: Never Been Kissed by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Another delightful romance given to us by Timothy Janovsky, whose little details feel so calculated to please me. This time: The Great Movie Ride (RIP) figures in a key scene.

🎮 Finished The Legend of Zelda (NES).

A classic, of course. I’ve never been able to get very far before, but I played it with Nintendo Switch Online and made liberal use of suspend points (aka save states) and walkthroughs. I had fun and finished both quests.

I like @ayjay’s idea of reflecting on what you’ve read weekly or monthly.

🔖📺 Watched Pokemon Concierge and read Pokémon Concierge’s Psyduck Is for the Millennial Pokémon Fans.

I’m a Xennial: Pokemon was more for the kids I babysat than for me, though I did get into the card game my freshman year of college.

Psyduck has long been my Pokemon soul mate, with her constant headaches and love of water. And this article articulates why Psyduck appeals to me even more in Pokemon Concierge.

🔖 Read The Web Renaissance Takes Off by Anil Dash.

Sign me up.

(I’m trying to make a web-related pun here about Lucrezia Borgia, but it’s just not happening.)

🔖 Read Ambient Co-Presence by Maggie Appleton.

This sounds really nice. My favorite locale for physical ambient co-presence is a university library, which I use a Winter Whale sound video to replicate at home. I use a few co& working sessions via a Mighty Networks or Zoom to do this, too. I wonder what the role of services like Focusmate or Flow.club is here.

Gonna be updating my about page soon. If you were going to choose something to include on my about page, what would it be?

Finished reading: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 📚

I’m late to this party but happy to finally be here. As sweet and hot as the romance here is, it’s the portrayal of fibromyalgia that makes my heart sing.

🔖 Austin Kleon’s list of 100 things that made his year is excellent, as always.

Responding to this post on gift-giving:

For me, the sweet spot for a gift is when you can use it to show that you’ve paid attention to what the person needs or cares about. Not because you want to be smug or feel good about yourself, but because as the receiver of a gift, it feels good to be seen.

Most years, I only give gifts to family, which certainly makes this easier. In recent years, I also pick an annual formula, for example, everyone gets a book or everyone gets a T-shirt.

This year, everyone got a donation to something they care about plus a token to unwrap.

• My brother got patronage of Defunctland and a Defunctland brochure.
• My sister got a symbolic adoption of a red panda through the World Wildlife Fund and a DVD of the Spirited Away stage show.
• My brother-in-law got a donation to the Order of the Good Death and an occult-themed cocktail recipe book.
• My mother got a donation to the American Cancer Society and a T-shirt with a meme she likes on it.
• My father got a manatee adoption from the Save the Manatee club and a Jeopardy! card game.

Each of these gifts says:

1. I noticed something that’s important to you.
2. I noticed something you enjoy.

There’s no perfect formula for gift giving, but I find using it as an opportunity to say “I see you” is a useful principle.

🔖 Read 2024: The Year of the Personal Website by Matthias Ott.

How about, from now on, we make every year the year of the personal website – and make the internet human, creative, personal, and weird again?

I’m down.

Leigh Bardugo encourages people on New Year’s Day to Begin As You Mean to Go On, meaning to spend 15 minutes doing something you want to do more of this year.

So I spent 15 minutes journaling with Esmé Weijun Wang’s Rawness of Remembering journaling course.

Some notes on my reading year 2023. I read 47 books. I overwhelmingly read romance, much more than any other genre. I have no regrets about that. There wasn’t a single book this year that stood out as more of a favorite than the rest.

We Could Be So Good is the one that grabbed me from the first sentence.

Mr. & Mrs. Witch is the one that set me on my path of reading mostly romance.

Dept. of Speculation is probably the one I read fastest.

I don’t finish books I wouldn’t recommend, so try whatever on this list looks good to you!

🍿 Watched Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story.

A fascinating documentary about a fascinating person.

Finished reading: For Never & Always by Helena Greer 📚

I love it so much. Finished it in under 48 hours. Helena Greer has given us a lovely place in Carrigan’s Christmasland and a host of delightful people to populate it. I keep seeing different bits of myself in each of her characters and it makes me happy. Highly recommend.

Me: I started this book last night and read only one chapter before bed. Now I’m on page 214.
W: Sounds like my wife.
📚

It is not humanly possible for Helena Greer to write fast enough to meet my desire for Carrigan’s content. It’s generous of her to give us a book a year. Yet I’d read however many she wrote as quickly as I could.

📚🗨️ “I want to live my life being irrationally hopeful. Loving people and fish and cities with my whole heart.” Jake Maia Arlow, How to Excavate a Heart

Finished reading: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow 📚

Lovely and sweet. Made me cry when the main character’s mom really shows up for her. Also kinda makes me want to travel to DC.

Yesterday my mom, who in April 2022 was told she would probably never walk again, walked (with a walker and people around to spot her) up my front steps, into my house, and over to the couch. This is the result of months of hard work and physical therapy. ♥️