📚 I’m sure there are a lot of things I’ll want to tell you about Season of Love but the first is that there’s a Veronica Mars reference and a shout-out to the coolest member of the Babysitters Club on the same page.

🔖📝 Read Finding the Secret Door Into Your Novel.

When a novel is wick, it has a life about it.

(Have we talked about how I married Dickon, Internet? Because I did.)

I drew the Ace of Swords as my anchor card for winter. I made it my phone background to help me remember that this season, I can use my sharp mind to cut through fog and that this is just the beginning. Deck is the Moonchild Tarot.

Finally picked this beauty up from the library. I had it from NetGalley but didn’t get it read before it expired. (Don’t fret over the menorah with all its candles in it on Day 5. That’s not the one we light.)

I feel like my new glasses give me a nebbishy vibe and I kind of love it. Who’s ready to cast me as Seymour?

Kelly J. Baker’s latest newsletter is about a year of not writing & what that means when being a writer is a key piece of your identity.

It helped me realize I often extrapolate from “If you write, you’re a writer” the logical fallacy “If you aren’t writing, you aren’t a writer.”

Happy solstice!

Finished reading: Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko 📚

Finished this in 2 or 3 days. I was drawn to it because of the cover & buzz. I stayed in it because of the magic of connection & my love of kind teen girls with a sense of justice. Gorgeous, evocative writing, highly recommend.

Said I was gonna disconnect cross-posting from Twitter, forgot to actually do it, gonna leave it on for now since they’ve walked back the bananas linking policy.

New glasses! Who knew I had a face under those cateyes?

Currently reading: Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko 📚

Woodland Goth: The Goblins of Labyrinth by Brian Froud 📚

Yep, I created a whole Woodland Goth bookshelf. Goblins of Labyrinth is a collectible. I don’t want it to get lost in my massive want-to-read list.

💬📚

“None of this had been fated; none of it foretold… They were just the people who had shown up and managed to survive.
But maybe that was the trick of it: to survive, to dare to stay alive, to forge your own hope when all hope had run out.” Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves

Finished reading: Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo 📚

I loved it so much. I know Leigh Bardugo is done with the Grishaverse for a while but I hope not for always.

Disconnecting cross-posting to Twitter after this post. Find my follow page at kimberlyhirsh.com if you want to keep up with me.

I thought, given my heavy criticism of the potential perspective that we should all join the Luddite club, it might be useful to discuss my own smartphone use and the steps I take to moderate it.

Let me start by saying that I know in the case of addictive behavior, moderation is sometimes not an option. I have no objection to people recognizing that they are in this situation and opting out of smartphone use, or potentially any Internet use at all. You’ve got to do what’s right for you.

My objection is to people who might suggest that what’s right for the Luddite club is right for everyone with a smartphone.

Don’t want a smartphone? Cool! Get rid of yours if you have one! Never get one if you don’t!

I myself vacillate wildly between intense use to the point of it disturbing my sleep (not good, obvs) and more instrumental use that is less disruptive to the rest of my life.

When I start to notice intense use - or when something like the Luddite club article prompts me to consider my own use - there are a few techniques I rely on to curb my use and help me moderate.

For a long time, my default was to work my way through this Better Humans article, Configure Your iPhone to Work for You, Not Against You. It links an Android version at the end, but the principles work for any smartphone, regardless of OS. This is a time consuming process and actually in the name of habit change and productivity involves adding apps I almost never use, so I have stopped going through the full process. I’ll sometimes Google around for other ideas about turning smartphones into tools (as opposed to toys or distraction), and use what I learn in those, too.

Here are the things I do, divided into almost always and sometimes categories.

Almost always

Turn off almost all notifications. I get notifications for calls, texts, and maps. That’s it. Corollary: I almost always have my phone on vibrate or silent, so even those notifications don’t disturb me.

Avoid social media apps. As much as possible, if I’m going to use social media, I do it through the browser. Occasionally I’ll need a feature like putting up a story on Instagram when I was on the UC Irvine Strike Solidarity Team’s Social Media Team and was contributing to that Instagram account. But I usually uninstall pretty rapidly after that.

Turn on Do Not Disturb. I’m in Do Not Disturb mode, with only starred contacts allowed through, unless I’m expecting a call from someone who isn’t a starred contact (like my doctor or a contractor who’s coming to work on the house). Starred contacts include family members and my kid’s school. That’s it.

Use no wallpaper + a black background OR Austin Kleon’s Read a Book Instead wallpaper. Pretty self-explanatory.

Turn off Raise to Wake. I have to push a button to turn my phone on and put in a code to see anything on it. (I just switched from a swipe to a numerical code in order to add a little more friction.)

Use bedtime mode at night. Most of the time, I have the phone in black and white with even more notifications blocked than usual, between 7:30 pm and 7:30 am. If I’m up in the night and want to watch something or play something on my phone, I try to leave bedtime mode on and do it in black and white. This only helps some, though.

Sometimes

Use Firefox Focus as my browser. When I’m getting way too deep into Internet rabbit holes, which I usually do in Chrome, I disable Chrome and switch to Firefox Focus. It doesn’t remember my log-ins, so I have to log in to each site I visit every time I visit it. It doesn’t keep a history, so I have to either search for or manually type in URLs. Sometimes, I need the affordances of Chrome, and I switch it back on. I haven’t figured out how to copy and paste in Focus yet.

Remove everything from my home screen. I usually have a pretty sparse home screen, but sometimes I remove everything from it. I’m not sure this is very effective though because then I tend to pull up the app drawer and scroll through all the apps, including some distracting ones like the browser, to get to the thing I want. So sometimes I’m more strategic and drop my most frequently used useful apps, like Google Keep and anything related to books or podcasts, on my home screen.

Use bedtime mode all day. Having the phone be in black and white makes it less appealing.

In the future

I still am in the bad habit of checking my phone first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, and any time I get up in the night. So I’ll be working on that.

Revised 5 TV shows to introduce me, now in chronological order of release! 📺

• Star Trek: The Next Generation 🖖🏻
• Animaniacs🐁
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer 👱‍♀️
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 🥨
• GLOW 🤼‍♀️

I use a smartphone AND I read novels.

Me, misquoting Lord of the Rings:

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the dark lord — "

My kid:

“FARTS!”

I have some thoughts about the Luddite club.

First, I don’t have a problem with people switching to flip phones. I do have a problem with the implication it makes them morally superior to people who use smartphones.

I think one of my biggest problems with the article is the feel of the writing: a sense of awe, a focus on fashion, a vibe that reads to me like “Ooh isn’t it amazing that these kids wear Doc Martens and read books?”

I fully support the desire to break free of slot machine dopamine hit features of social media. But here are activities that, in the article, read as though they require giving up your smartphone but that I, a person with a smartphone, sometimes do:

• Draw
• Paint
• Close my eyes outside
• Read books
• Sew
• Borrow books from the library
• Go to parks
• Fall asleep away from the glow of my phone
• Read in hammocks

I’m glad teens do these things. And if they can only do them without smartphones, okay. But let’s not act like these activities are inaccessible to people with smartphones.

One of the most concerning things is the veneration these kids seem to feel for Chris McCandless. One of them says, “…that guy was experiencing life. Real life.” But actually, what he experienced was death. This dude might have been sympathetic but I know I don’t want my kid holding him up as a role model. If you’re going to go off the grid, learn how to take care of yourself BEFORE you get there.

I’m also not convinced that this is the beginning of a social movement. The founder of the club was discouraged when people suggested it was classist, but she says, “[my advisor] told me most revolutions actually start with people from industrious backgrounds, like Che Guevara.” I think the word we might be looking for here rather than “industrious” is “privileged,” “middle class,” “bourgeois,” or “capitalist.” But also, Che Guevara was motivated by witnessing other people’s misery and took action directed at alleviating it. I hope Luddite club kids use some of their screen-free time to benefit others. The article doesn’t make it clear whether they do, so I don’t know how apt the comparison to Guevara is.

Meg Pillow pointed out that for some of us, social media has been a great way to expand our awareness beyond our own experiences, to escape a filter bubble. One of the kids quoted in the article said, “Being in this club reminds me we’re all living on a floating rock and that it’s all going to be OK.” But when I read this, it made me think that without some other way of learning about the world, this is simple escapism. Are the Luddite club kids listening to the radio? Reading independent newspapers? Watching public television? How do they learn about the world beyond their schools and club, about the world that’s not printed about in classic or mainstream printed texts?

The most honest part of the article seemed to me to be when the founder of the club said that she likes that her parents are addicted to their smartphones, “because I get to feel a little superior to them.” This is developmentally right on track for a high school senior. I’m pretty sure these kids in the Luddite club will be fine. But I think we adults need to look a little deeper at what’s going on before deciding we should model our own lives on theirs or pressure our kids to do likewise.

Apparently tonight is a waking-after-every-sleep-cycle night. Not my favorite.

🔖📺 Read Wednesday Forgets Why We Fell in Love With the Addams Family.

“The Addams Family films were about family being a haven of pure acceptance and unquestioning love.”

This is a perfect articulation of something I’ve known in my heart since 1991.

Introduce yourself with 5 TV shows 📺:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer 👱‍♀️
• Firefly 🌌
• Star Trek: The Next Generation 🖖
• GLOW 🤼‍♀️
• The X-Files 🛸

I just finished the first episode of Wednesday. I have so many thoughts and feelings.

First, I’ve seen criticism that the Addams Family works best when you have the whole family. (Sadly, I can’t find the link to where I read this right now.) I completely agree but the decision to rely on the trope of a teen rebelling against their parents means any family time here is very tense. So I don’t want the whole family together because they’re not as loving as I’m used to.

As Emmet Asher-Perrin points out, the Addams Family movies are all about family as a safe haven, on the unconditional not just love, but positive regard they have for their children. That vibe isn’t present here.

(I’ll mention at this point that I haven’t seen the recent animated Addams Family movies, and that I shunned the musical because a huge part of the premise was Wednesday wanting to be normal for a boy and that’s just… not very Wednesday.)

But.

Jenna Ortega is brilliant. She perfectly revives My Generation’s Wednesday (what’s my generation? Xennials I guess?). Her delivery is beautiful. Her physicality is on point (🤺).

I really appreciate the Christina Ricci cameo. She’s adorable.

I love how this feels like a goth Veronica Mars. I’ve seen comparisons to Riverdale, but at least in the first season, Jughead’s narration is reportage, not reflection. He is wryly commenting on the corruption in his town. In contrast, Veronica and Wednesday give us interiority that isn’t self-indulgent.

It has me thinking about what bell hooks has to say about confessional writing, how perception of it is gendered. I’ve been reading remembered rapture lately.

I can’t deal with the family tension and all of the school bits are sort of… just being the cliche rather than commenting on it?

We’ve seen this roommate dynamic in Wicked (I may have started singing “Loathing” to myself when Wednesday and Enid met). There doesn’t seem to be a new take on it here.

Also: the embrace of the supernatural beyond the Addams’s immediate circle feels a little off to me here. In Charles Addams’s comics and in the 90s movies, the world was pretty normal. To suddenly have a school full of vampires, werewolves, gorgons, and sirens feels not exactly random, but out of place.

On this note: Thing. Thing has scars, Frankenstein’s creature style, and I don’t love it. I think because a disembodied hand is enough weird. It requires no additional weird.

The costumes are wonderful. The exterior view of the school makes me super happy.

I’ll give it a few more episodes but giving the Addams Family the Riverdale treatment with a Harry Potter setting, Doyle/Cordelia-on-Angel visions, and a more-Veronica Mars-than-Jughead voiceover feels mostly like trying to do too many things at one time.

(Also, I’ve seen comparisons to Nancy Drew, Buffy, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch but none to VMars, which feels super weird to me.)

Replacing Firefly in my 5 shows to introduce me and subbing in CXG.