Kimberly Hirsh

Pro-tip: Stuck in or overwhelmed by your research? Write a memo.

True facts about my dreams: when I was reading CARRIE and started having dreams related to it, it felt like a relief, a respite from my stress dreams about being a bad caregiver.

I was all, “My blog isn’t cross-posting to Twitter! Whyyyy?” but then I saw that I had disabled it cross-posting anywhere. This post is a test to see if enabling cross-posting was all I needed to do.

Thinking about writing a blog post about the alignment of research, especially qualitative research, over the life of a project. We live in a world where we may repeatedly have to reconsider our research scope. Where and how can we stay true to our original research purpose?

The Internet is all “Check out the Whimsigoth aesthetic!” and y’all, a better name for it would be dELiA*s-core.

Currently reading: The Dead Zone by Stephen King 📚

Finished reading: Carrie by Stephen King 📚

I don’t recall the last time I read a book inside of 24 hours.

Birthday selfie from yesterday in my South Square Mall - oops I meant Starcourt Mall - hat.

🔖 Read Violence Made Me Feel Like I’d Left My Body. Physical Theater Helped Me Return by Lindsey Trout Hughes 🎭

🔖 Read ‘Lost’ Fans Gave Me a Safe Place on the Internet. Is Such Fandom Possible Now? (Catapult) by Anna Myers

I’m 41 today and it’s a big deal because every day that I live is a day I chose to be in the world and a whole year of sticking around is huge.

40 has been by turns amazing and rough. But mostly I’ve loved how it feels like the perfect age to really go all in on unapologetically being myself and to completely bail on caring about any superficial opinion anyone has of me. It’s also a great age to realize mostly people aren’t silently criticizing me, because they’re too focused on themselves to pay attention to me.

Who I wanted to be at 40 is also who I want to be at 41. I’m doing a good job on all of those. 41 will be a year of maintaining that and having new adventures.

If you want to be part of the virtual celebration of Kimbertide, I offered some good suggestions in 2020 and 2021. I’ll probably do some of those.

Thanks for hanging out with me on the Internet this year, y’all. You bring a lot of love and connection into my life.

Posted on my birthday in 2018:

Yesterday I found out that my thyroid is out of whack again. I’m trying to remember everything I learned before, not just about how to heal, but also how to cope.

plus ça change…

Me: I don’t know what to do! Should I spend the next 45 minutes reading CARRIE or playing METROID?
W: I like the 80s, too.

🔖 Read Video Games Are for Everyone—And That Should Include Disabled People (Catapult) by Allyssa Capri.

Great discussion of where the gaming landscape is with respect to accessibility, plus resources for disabled gamers, and it ends on a positive note.

🔖 Read Black Women in Fantasy Saved Me Where Academia Failed (Catapult by Ravynn K. Stringfield.

I always love reading what Dr. Stringfield has to say. This is, in a way, a scholar’s origin story, and I love it.

🔖📝 Read On Writing with Chronic Migraines (Catapult) by Yuvi Zalkow.

I really appreciate Zalkow’s metaphors for pain and tiered system for deciding what work to do. This may inspire me to create my own spreadsheet of task levels.

The past few years, I’ve written a blog post on my birthday about who I want to be that year. My birthday’s in 2 days & as I look back at the past year, I’m too exhausted to come up with new thoughts on who I want to be. I’m going to let last year’s stand.

I keep asking myself, “When will I not be too tired for x?” and it turns out my thyroid hormone levels are suboptimal so now that we’re upping one of my meds doses I really hope the answer is “In about 6-8 weeks.”

Most of the time the answer to not having enough storage is to get rid of stuff, but with books, I tend to feel the answer is more bookshelves.

Y’all, check out this picture of Gene Roddenberry cosplaying as a Romulan commander from Balance of Terror from Cinefantastique #20 that I found on the fanlore.org cosplay page. 😍🖖🏻

Me, pitching future research clients: So in this scenario, see, you’re Buffy, and you know there’s fork guy and he’s scared of the substitute teacher but you don’t know what it all means, and I’m Giles and I’m going to use books and stuff to make sense of fork guy for you. 👱‍♀️

I’m workshopping a new professional tagline because I want to emphasize that I’m a qualitative researcher. First draft: “I use stories to answer questions.” I’m open to feedback.

I found a picture of myself on Tumblr. Dropping all other descriptors of myself in favor of “Data in an oversized cardigan.” 🖖🏻

“There’s surviving, and then there’s living.” - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 🖖🏻📺💬

Finished Strange New Worlds Season 1. A+. Somebody give Ethan Peck’s eyebrow an Emmy. 🖖🏻📺