My kid’s best friend’s mom got a new job and isn’t starting it until January, but has already left her old job. She has all of December to just be, with her kid in school for the first two weeks.

I told her that sounded amazing.

She said, “I feel like… I feel like myself. I was going to say I feel like a whole new person, but really I feel like myself.”

I said, “I want to feel like myself. I’ve gotta figure out how to do that.”

2022 feels like a year that was stolen from my whole family of origin, thanks to my mom’s leukemia and paraplegia. My mom has obviously had an incredibly hard year. My dad is learning what it is to be a primary caregiver at almost 70 years old and it’s a very different life than he’s ever known before. My brother has gone from being cared for to needing to give care to. My sister and I have both experienced frequent chronic illness flares.

In the spring, I resented the flowers for blooming. Didn’t they know my mom had leukemia? I didn’t do any of my normal springtime stuff.

In the summer, I made a whole plan to achieve summer vibes, but I only really did it halfheartedly.

In the fall, my mom was in the ER about once a week, with an extended hospital stay due to the cognitive effects of a medication reaction. Halloween was fun but I didn’t appreciate the gorgeous weather nearly enough.

And now Winter Is Coming 🐺, and I am realizing for the first time that I have always been A Christmas Person, but when we were decorating our tree I suddenly got very grouchy. Because of how different this year is and will be.

This is not just me sharing the bad — it’s me elucidating the things that have made me feel Not Me.

In a very Me move, to figure out what feels like me I went to my blog archives to see how I was coping in year 2 of the pandemic, before my mom got leukemia.

How to Feel Like Myself

Books & Reading

• Share quotes from what I’m reading.
• Read lots of books in a variety of formats & genres, but come back home to fantasy frequently.
• Talk to other people about what we’re reading & what else we might want to read.
• Read & write fanfic, especially for sitcoms and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Read a lot of interesting articles.
• Re-read Austin Kleon’s books.

Health & Wellness

• Blog about my experiences with chronic illness.

Work

• Blog about my research.

Crafting

• Gather references for a cosplay but don’t make it yet.

TV & Movies

• Watch holiday rom-coms.
• Watch Star Trek.
• Introduce my kid to older kids TV.
• Blog about what I’m watching.

The Internet

• Think about cool possibilities for the web, mostly late at night.
• Take occasional breaks from social stuff.

Uh oh, I’m doing me things and I still don’t feel like myself

I’m reading, especially fantasy. I’m watching holiday rom-coms and Star Trek. I introduced my kid to Wishbone 🐶. Why don’t I feel like myself?

The Missing Piece

I’m not reflecting, blogging, and talking to people. Metacognition is key to Kimberlying and I have let it get away from me. Time to get back to it.

🔖 Read How’d That Thing Go? by Kate McKean.

“I don’t want a schedule, I want a sandbox. I want a list of things that need to be done and a container of time to do them, and then I get to pick.”

Yes! Life as sandbox game! I needed this.

My personal Pokémon avatar was behind today’s advent calendar door.

Want to read: Screaming on the Inside by Jessica Grose 📚

🍿 Watched Falling for Christmas.

I’ve been an unironic Lindsay Lohan fan since I saw Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, so I was delighted to see her in this adorable trope-filled bit of holiday fluff. Cute & funny.

Just listened to a super stressful strike townhall and I’m tempted to watch tonight’s Neverafter but I think TNG is the smarter move right now.

Q asks Baby Q Amanda Rogers if she’s ever caused the spontaneous combustion of someone she doesn’t like, then gives Picard a look as if to say, “You see how much I like you? I haven’t combusted you! 😍” 🖖🏻

My whole family and I are moving to Tom Bombadil’s house. He and Goldberry are such gracious hosts and we will be relaxed there. (Please note: we cannot actually do this.) 📚

Getting blood work done, it’s been 20 minutes since my appointment time and I still haven’t been seen, fasting and haven’t eaten in almost 15 hours… Not happy.

🎮 I’m more than 10 yrs behind & have already played Inquisition but some quick thoughts after 1 hr of DA: Origins:

1. I appreciate that the music in the Denerim Alienage has Klezmer vibes.

2. I do NOT appreciate that my leather armor is a bikini.

🎮 Apparently my Dragon Age: Origins character isn’t in leather armor that looks like underwear. She’s in her actual underwear because I guess I unequipped her regular clothes but failed to actually equip the leather armor. I’ll fix this when I’m next playing.

Trying to figure out if I can make a crow cane head work on my adjustable cane so I can walk the streets of Amsterdam pretending it’s Ketterdam and I’m Kaz Brekker… 📚

🔖🎮 Read Playing ‘Tunic’ Reminds Me How to Approach Sickness and Recovery by Martin Cahill (Catapult).

The head teacher at my kid’s school for next year sent an email saying that the only school supplies he will need are a backpack and a lunchbox and I haven’t felt so disappointed in a long time. Guess I just have to buy school supplies for myself…

Y’all don’t even know how transformed this fireplace is from just a couple months ago. W painted it white & my brother-in-law MM and I hung the mantel. First picture is after & second is before.

Everybody is doing their year-end stuff, so I thought I’d do mine.

I read 46 books this year including comics/graphic novels and poetry. About 12 of those were graphic novels or poetry and another 2 or 3 were short story or novella collections. This puts me right about where my usual average for longer works is, around 30 books. I don’t set quantitative reading goals anymore besides reading one more book than I’ve read so far in a given year.

My reading this year was heavily influenced by the microgenres/aesthetics of cozy fantasy, adventurecore, and woodland goth.

I sought out cozy fantasy and adventurecore in particular because I wanted my reading to comfort me.

I joined the Atlas Obscura book club on Literati, because Austin Kleon stopped running his book club. I only finished two of the 5 books I got, but I look forward to finishing the ones I didn’t. I love the curation but the monthly format doesn’t really work for me and I wasn’t making the kinds of connections to other readers that I’d hoped to.

I started to list my favorite books I’ve read this year but the list got too long. I loved the Hildafolk series and The Bloody Chamber.

I began the year with the intention to get caught up on Leigh Bardugo’s backlist, and I only have one book to go, The Rule of Wolves. I started that this week, so I hope to finish before the year is out and be caught up just in time for the release of the new Alex Stern book.

I think that’s all I have to share about my reading this year. How did your reading year go?

I have done all the things in Stardew Valley 1.4 and it took me ~245 hrs. That’s ~245 hrs when I was playing Stardew Valley and not doomscrolling.

You can log a lot more hours in a game when it’s playable in little bits.

True facts about my time on the early web:

In many chats (like, html + server side scripting with auto-refresh), my handle was Elora Danan and my profile picture was a Labyrinth-era photo of Jennifer Connelly.

I am a very specific sort of nerd.

Hey Micro.blog friendos, I activated ActivityPub & can follow Mastodon peeps via M.b but how do I tell people to find me at @kimberlyhirsh@kimberlyhirsh.com? I’m not showing up in the Mastodon search on indieweb.social. TIA!

@help @jean @manton

My son sings “Step by Step” at school sometimes. I always thought it sounded like a union song and, indeed, the lyrics come from a miner’s union. I continue to strike today in solidarity with the Graduate Student Employees & Student Researchers.

Friends! Are you on Mastodon? Are you seeing this on Mastodon? I’m about to stop using indieweb.social to syndicate my posts to Mastodon but you can still follow me! Drop @kimberlyhirsh@kimberlyhirsh.com in your Mastodon search & give me a follow.

Some notes on my Spotify Wrapped:

1. Joe Hisaishi is the composer for My Neighbor Totoro, which is what I wake M up with on the rare morning he’s not awake by 7:30.
2. All 5 of my top songs are from the Totoro soundtrack because I play it other times too.
3. The reason my minutes are so high is that I use Spotify for M’s white noise.
4. Where this says “New Wave,” you should read “Goth.”.

No Enya this year, but The Lonely Island stands strong.

Wonderful things 🥳:

1. My kid fell asleep before 9:30 for the first time this week. 😴
2. I ❤️ Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, & Andy Serkis singing as both of them. 📚
3. Tomorrow I get to watch Neverafter. 🧙‍♀️
4. My friend Little Willow rescued a kitty & sent me many pictures. 🐱

🔖 Read ‘Y’all,’ that most Southern of Southernisms, is going mainstream – and it’s about time by David B. Parker (The Conversation), h/t @benwerd.

As my Latin teacher said when teaching us the 2nd person plural, “y’all” is a legitimate contraction.

I’m like a toddler over here with big feelings, might cry from relief because my parents got my brother’s special needs trust and ABLE accounts squared away. 💞