Kimberly Hirsh

🔖 Read Storytelling and the Craft of Quiltmaking. 🧵

The Klein Librarian for Science Fiction at UC Riverside sounds like a pretty cool job.

Want to read: Information Hunters by Kathy Peiss 📚

Whoever wrote that thing about how 13 yos don’t write fanfic has everybody on Twitter talking about their Sailor Moon fanfic. I wrote mine (the redemption of the Spectre Sisters) at 14. (Also had a Star Wars fic where my sister was sister-insert version of Luke & I was Leia.)

I like to ask from time to time and I haven’t in a while: what’s my brand?

Finished reading: How to Make a Living with Your Writing Third Edition by Joanna Penn 📚

Great advice on creating multiple income streams as a writer. Tons of recommended resources and helpful questions to consider.

🍿 Watched Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga because it was nominated for a Hugo. I had a lot of fun with it. I like this kind of gentle performance from Will Ferrell & Rachel McAdams always makes me happy.

We are at DEFCON Falling Asleep to Mr. Rogers.

I don’t share my daily Wordle result, but I do play it most days. I get it in 5 or fewer tries 94% of the time, 3 or fewer 32% of the time. I wanted to share what I do in case it spares anyone else some frustration.

The first key is to memorize this combination of nonsense words that will help you remember English letter frequency: etaoin shrdlu.

I try to start with a word that uses five of those letters.

Next there are two tricks I rely on most of the time:

1. Familiarity with common letter combinations/placements
2. Systematic movement of yellow letters

The first one involves things like knowing that H is often part of a two-letter combo like SH, TH, or CH, and that these combos usually occur at the beginning or end of words. Likewise thinking about how there are vowels in most words, different things that often come before E at the end of a word (like ATE, ACE, ALE), or how two letters often appear together (like UI).

As for the second: once I get a yellow letter, I try words that use that letter in different positions so I can eliminate places where it doesn’t belong.

The last thing I do before random guessing is look at the unused letters on the keyboard and try to build words combining them with the pieces I already know.

I hope this has been helpful. I’ll try to post a sort of “play-aloud” with screenshots and my thought processes soon.

In case you’re wondering where my head is at, I spilled the PCR testing solution while trying to test my kid, had to ask the pharmacy tech for a new vial, am terrified that I fucked up the test somehow & think I’m the worst. We may be seeing a depression relapse here.

Will the giant invasive ballooning spiders eat the mosquitos in my yard? If so, I don’t welcome like ALL of them but you know, a couple would be okay. In the yard. Not in the house if I can help it. (I’m from Florida so the part where they’re the size of a kid’s hand is meh.)

Pro-tip: brains work better when you feed them.

Finished reading: Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore 📚

So great. Cashore gets five genres in this book and each one is a delight.

I changed my goal for April’s Camp NaNoWriMo. My goal now is to publish 22,500 words on my blog over the course of the month. I’ve changed my username over there to kimberlyhirsh, so feel free to find me and add me as a buddy.

Finished reading: The Immune System Recovery Plan by Susan Blum 📚

Me: Let’s see who among my LinkedIn connections has qualitative research in their profile. Maybe I can eyeball their jobs and see what might be worth exploring for my next thing.

LinkedIn: It’s everyone, everyone you know is a qualitative researcher, even improv people.

Hello, world. Got any cool qualitative UX researcher friends you can connect me with? I’d love to learn more about this career (especially in ed tech, fan-serving, or gaming industries). The qual is pretty key. I could get into mixed methods but never pure quant.

My kid’s school is going mask-optional indoors in April and now I don’t know if I’m going to sleep any time soon because I’m freaking out.

I’m freaked out because I’m in multiple high risk categories and my mom is in all the same ones as me PLUS she has leukemia & is undergoing chemo. But I hate the idea of telling my kid he has to mask even if his friends don’t.

I ran the introductory adventure for Hero Kids for M & W. It was a lot of fun and now I’m very tired. 🎲

💬📺🖖🏻 “The part of me that really wants is the part that has to wait in line.” Picard, 2x01, “The Stargazer”

💬📺🖖🏻 “Exhilaration enhances the absorption of knowledge.” Picard, 2x01, “The Stargazer” [Cool how this sums up my whole deal.]

💬📚 “A storm can be a cozy thing when one isn’t in it.” - Kristin Cashore in Jane, Unlimited

What?! Kristin Cashore just had a character in Jane, Unlimited share my one strong Doctor Who opinion! “Nobody likes Martha Jones but I like Martha Jones.”

I can’t tell if the locus of origin of my current inability to focus is in my body, in The World, or shared between them.

I’m at that point in a documentation/literature review where you have to just let stuff roll around in your brain and while it IS productive, it doesn’t FEEL productive.