Kimberly Hirsh

Gonna be updating my about page soon. If you were going to choose something to include on my about page, what would it be?

🔖 Read Ambient Co-Presence by Maggie Appleton.

This sounds really nice. My favorite locale for physical ambient co-presence is a university library, which I use a Winter Whale sound video to replicate at home. I use a few co& working sessions via a Mighty Networks or Zoom to do this, too. I wonder what the role of services like Focusmate or Flow.club is here.

🔖 Austin Kleon’s list of 100 things that made his year is excellent, as always.

Leigh Bardugo encourages people on New Year’s Day to Begin As You Mean to Go On, meaning to spend 15 minutes doing something you want to do more of this year.

So I spent 15 minutes journaling with Esmé Weijun Wang’s Rawness of Remembering journaling course.

🔖 Read 2024: The Year of the Personal Website by Matthias Ott.

How about, from now on, we make every year the year of the personal website – and make the internet human, creative, personal, and weird again?

I’m down.

Responding to this post on gift-giving:

For me, the sweet spot for a gift is when you can use it to show that you’ve paid attention to what the person needs or cares about. Not because you want to be smug or feel good about yourself, but because as the receiver of a gift, it feels good to be seen.

Most years, I only give gifts to family, which certainly makes this easier. In recent years, I also pick an annual formula, for example, everyone gets a book or everyone gets a T-shirt.

This year, everyone got a donation to something they care about plus a token to unwrap.

• My brother got patronage of Defunctland and a Defunctland brochure.
• My sister got a symbolic adoption of a red panda through the World Wildlife Fund and a DVD of the Spirited Away stage show.
• My brother-in-law got a donation to the Order of the Good Death and an occult-themed cocktail recipe book.
• My mother got a donation to the American Cancer Society and a T-shirt with a meme she likes on it.
• My father got a manatee adoption from the Save the Manatee club and a Jeopardy! card game.

Each of these gifts says:

1. I noticed something that’s important to you.
2. I noticed something you enjoy.

There’s no perfect formula for gift giving, but I find using it as an opportunity to say “I see you” is a useful principle.

🍿 Watched Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story.

A fascinating documentary about a fascinating person.

Some notes on my reading year 2023. I read 47 books. I overwhelmingly read romance, much more than any other genre. I have no regrets about that. There wasn’t a single book this year that stood out as more of a favorite than the rest.

We Could Be So Good is the one that grabbed me from the first sentence.

Mr. & Mrs. Witch is the one that set me on my path of reading mostly romance.

Dept. of Speculation is probably the one I read fastest.

I don’t finish books I wouldn’t recommend, so try whatever on this list looks good to you!

Finished reading: For Never & Always by Helena Greer 📚

I love it so much. Finished it in under 48 hours. Helena Greer has given us a lovely place in Carrigan’s Christmasland and a host of delightful people to populate it. I keep seeing different bits of myself in each of her characters and it makes me happy. Highly recommend.

It is not humanly possible for Helena Greer to write fast enough to meet my desire for Carrigan’s content. It’s generous of her to give us a book a year. Yet I’d read however many she wrote as quickly as I could.