Kimberly Hirsh

Today’s Coding Progress: Completed the freeCodeCamp projects, “Learn CSS Colors by Building a Set of Colored Markers.”

Thoughts: CSS is already breaking my brain here. Using it to style empty containers chafes against my feeling that it should be for styling content, not styling blank space. I thought this was a thing of me not being smart or with-it enough to understand this use of CSS, but now I think it’s a conceptual problem. From this conceptual problem flow all kinds of struggles with understanding properties and the arguments they take. This is definitely a place where a reference will come in handy. So I think I’ll hunt down some writing about using CSS this way and a resource that will be a good reference.

Little coding update! Completed the freeCodeCamp projects “Learn HTML by Building a Cat Photo App”, “Learn Basic CSS by Building a Cafe Menu.” This is all familiar stuff, but I always appreciate the reminder to use semantic tags like section & the refresh of how forms work.

🔖 Read Primark launches clothing range designed for people with disabilities.

I love this. I hope we see it spread to other retailers.

It’s hard to feel much like writing these days. I’m going to be building some hand-coded projects and learning more hand-coding stuff, so I’ll be blogging about that process.

Bless Miss O’Kistic for this timeless tweet.

Finished reading: A Seditious Affair by KJ Charles 📚

A Tory pursuing seditionists for the Home Office and a radical pamphleteer fall in love in Regency England and it’s just as perfect as you’d expect. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

In Austin Kleon’s newsletter today, he writes about 7 questions he asks himself when he doesn’t know what to do next. (The newsletter has free editions on Fridays and paid ones on Tuesdays.)

At the end of the newsletter he asked his subscribers, “Do you have a question that helps you?”

My response got so big and I liked it so much, I decided to turn it into a blog post, so here you go!

I feel like I have stolen this like an artist in the best way, in that I’ve taken from multiple sources that get at this idea and combined them into something new:

“What does my body need right now?”

I manage multiple chronic illnesses, and the answer to that question can change from moment to moment. I often feel like a brain floating around in a meat cage. So I drop in to my body and see what it needs: water? A nap? A shower? A hug? Stillness? Motion?

Because I can’t do everything I need or want to do, I have to prioritize, and asking this question helps me choose what to do first, what to expend my energy on in a way that gives me hope of sustaining or even increasing my energy for the rest of the day.

Finished reading: A Fashionable Indulgence by KJ Charles 📚

Just excellent.

Help me out, Internet. I saw someone talking about a cross-posting service a while back, maybe @pratik@writing.exchange? What is that service called? Thanks!

Me just now: I think my boots don’t look as cool with the laces looser on the foot and tighter on the ankle.

Also me: Kimberly, you are a middle-aged school librarian. You don’t need to look cool.