I really did not spend this holiday “break” how I expected to, and now all I can do is scroll Twitter and think about how I don’t care right now about to goals, writing, productivity, or anything, so I guess I’m in denial & depression at the same time.
Which stage of grief is the not-sleeping-because-you-are-contemplating-your-own-denial one? My grandmother always seemed immortal to me in a way no one else did & I fully expect her to attend her own memorial bc she was at all the other ones at that cemetery. Grief is weird.
Probably gonna cry thanks to the crushing weight of (gesturing at the world) all this, and I’m playing on easy mode.
🍿 Watched Wonder Woman 1984. Was it flawless? No. Did the fact that it was a Wonder Woman movie and had a cute kid in it gain it enormous good will from me? Absolutely.
My grandmother Nita died this morning. She loved us all so much and always welcomed us to her home, which is the closest thing to a childhood home that I have. I had a really lovely conversation with her right before Michael’s birthday & I’m so glad. ♥️
🔖 Tips for Starting a Bookstagram: Getting started in the bookish corner of Instagram can be overwhelming. This blog post offers some helpful advice.
Currently reading: In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan 📚
Want to read: The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century by Adam Kirsch 📚
Want to read: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman 📚
Me at 5 am: It’s fine, I’ll take a nap this afternoon.
Me at 5 pm: Why would I nap when there’s Bring It On fanfic I could be reading?
I just re-read my 2019 Year-in-Review & 2020 Word of the Year blog post, published a little over a year ago. When I look at all the stuff I got done in 2019, all the places I went, all the people I spent time with, I am struck by how different 2020 has been. We all know it, but I’ve actually become inured to it. And then I read something like this. Cons. Travel. Flotation therapy. All things I haven’t done in 2020.
Because, you know, global pandemic.
But I still did some stuff in 2020!
My word of the year for 2020 was FULL, specifically filling my well and being my full self. I think I’ve succeeded brilliantly, so yay for that. I also wanted to read for pleasure, play video games, and pursue my core desired feelings of ease, creativity, and connection. I’ve done all that stuff, too! So even though 2020 changed a LOT of my plans, I still did what I hoped to do. That’s pretty cool.
One of the things I realized this year was that daily projects don’t suit me, for a variety of reasons. I need a little more flexibility. So I’m giving myself permission to do daily projects my way - which is to say, to focus on increasing how much I do the thing, rather than being sure I do it daily. So I read more poetry this year than ever before, but I didn’t read a poetry book a day every day in August. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
I’m also realizing that natural cycles are the best way for me, personally, to measure time. So I’m setting goals and planning in quarters instead, specifically Wheel-of-the-Year-style quarters. So from December 21 to March 21, my goal is to get my dissertation done and, ideally, defended. (The defense may be closer to the end of March, and that’s fine.) I don’t know what comes next after that, and that’s okay.
And I’m selecting a word of the quarter, which may turn into a word of the year but I often find that by mid-March, a new word has revealed itself. My word for the first quarter of 2020 is PLAY, which I’m using in its broadest possible sense. So I’m going to try learning to play some of the musical instruments I have around the house, playing more games, trying new art forms, and deliberately engaging in purposeless activity.
I hope you find a way to have fun, regardless of what 2021 brings.
Image Caption: This is what the best days at pandemic preschool look like for us: different kids on screen together, all pursuing work that lights them up. (M. is in the foreground and his classmates are actually hidden behind their work.)
🔖 Yes to Masks. No to Parties. 2021 Will Be a Lot Like 2020: disheartening, but not surprising.
🔖 Run, Die, Repeat: How Roguelike Games Helped Us Get Through 2020 - Roguelikes reflect not only the cycle of the pandemic year, but also the cycle of chronic illness.
Here are my goals for 2021:
Don’t @ me about SMART goals. Do @ me about what you’re reading/learning.
Want to read: Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning by Tom Vanderbilt 📚
Friends, there are at least two modern retellings of Jane Eyre coming out this year: The Wife Upstairs and Mrs. Rochester’s Ghost.
🔖 Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us I will never not appreciate Ed Yong.
🔖 The Vaccine Rollout’s Known Knowns and More In Zeynep Tufecki’s Insight newsletter, Whitney R. Robinson explains the intersection of exposure, infection, and fatality risk and how it interacts with vaccine prioritization.
🔖 The Life in The Simpsons Is No Longer Attainable I don’t have a word for how this article hit me, but it hit me hard.
Time to crowdsource a tagline! I’m going to start calling myself a Consulting Scholar-Librarian, with the tagline “Like Sherlock Holmes with ____.” But I’m still working out what goes in the blank. “More databases” isn’t specific enough. “An ORCiD” is too specific. Thoughts?
More dark academia books!
Me to W: You know how you sometimes for fun you give people advice on research design in a Fan Studies Discord server?
W: I have not had that experience, but go on.
Want to read: Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas 📚
Want to read: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth 📚
I bought myself a Theracane and it’s not arriving until Thursday. I’m really looking forward to having it and also sad that I might still have this right shoulder/deltoid trigger point pain until then.