Kimberly Hirsh

Burnham’s “Let’s fly” is probably the best captain catchphrase but Dal’s “Go fast” might be a close second. 🖖🏻

I just bought the Kindle edition of both volumes of Briana Lawrence’s mixed media magical girl series, Magnifique NOIR, and I am psyched about this magic. Cosmic Green’s outfit is a dream. All the characters are gorgeous. 📚

Encountering a corpse forced the man who would be Buddha to see life as a process of unpredictable and constant change. - Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

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We are all just future corpses. - Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

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I have a vague feeling I’m at risk of becoming the first victim in the X-Files episode “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”:

Why did this woman collect dolls? What whas it about her life? Was it one specific moment where she suddenly said: “I know: dolls”?

Reading misuthewitch’s thesis for my Artist Date today.

[Image Description: A tablet in a purple case displays a paper titled, “Make-Up!: The Mythic Narrative and Transformation as a Mechanism for Personal and Spiritual Growth in Magical Girl (Maho Shojo) Anime.”] 📺

It was my half birthday almost 2 weeks ago, so it seems like a good time to check in on whether I’m being the person I want to be at 40. Here are the intentions I set:

1. I think I want to be a little less ambitious about 40, to set fewer goals.
2. I want to be a loving and mostly gentle mother.
3. I want to take care of my own body, including making clothes built to fit it.
4. I want to keep trying new things and growing as a self-employed person.

So how am I doing?

For #1, pretty well. There are a lot of maybes right now. Maybe I’ll submit a paper for that conference. Maybe I’ll go to that webinar. Maybe maybe maybe. This fits in with the need to be super flexible as a caregiver and a person with chronic illness.

For #2, awesome if I do say so myself. My kid definitely knows I love him - and making sure my loved ones feel loved is my highest ambition, if that imagine-your-own-funeral exercise is any indication. I’m also doing pretty well with being mostly gentle. I step away if I’m too frustrated to be kind, saying out loud, “I’m frustrated.” A+, me.

3. I am slowly taking care of my body, though not making any clothes yet. I’ve made having a cup of warm lemon water in the morning a habit and have gotten into a routine of eating nutritious breakfasts that don’t have a ton of sugar in them and meet my target dietary restrictions (eliminate gluten and corn, limit dairy and nightshades).

4. This is another one where progress is happening, but it’s slow. My consulting work for Quirkos is the main way I’ve been doing this. This is on the back burner a bit while I’m doing the postdoc.

Pretty pleased with myself, actually. I’m doing okay.

I’m RSVPing yes to IndieWebCamp Personal Libraries Pop Up Session.

Excited to chat about how we track and share book stuff! 📚

In the spirit of cosmic effery that embracing radical uncertainty requires, I turned my ankle this morning. Probably a super mild sprain, given the mild swelling and bruising. (I have ice, stabilizers, and a cane. And therabands.)

Okay, world. I’m going to try turning it off and then turning it on again, “it” being this day.

More than a little psyched about Emily Vardell & Sarah Beth Nelson’s paper Teaching Reference Interview Skills with Improv.

🔖 Read The Only Work Ethic I Care About is the One on Star Trek

Yes! When a 20th c guy ends up on the Enterprise and is all “What am I supposed to do if I don’t need to make money?” Picard is basically like, “Grow.” ❤️ 🖖‍‍

An undergrad sent me a message thanking me for my post A Start-to-Finish Literature Review Workflow and asked the question:

Is there an exhaustive way of making sure that the literature gap you have identified is genuinely a gap?

The short answer is, no. There isn’t. But there are ways to get close.

In my experience, the best way to begin is with a specific research topic in mind, but before you have fully developed a question. You get familiar with the literature using the tips from step 4 in my workflow: Identify potential literature.

• Consult with a trusted colleague.
• Search databases.
• Search Google Scholar.
• Follow citations backwards.
• Follow citations forwards.

After you look at the abstracts for these and eliminate the ones that are outside the scope of your topic, pay close attention when you’re doing your Abstract-Introduction-Conclusion extraction reading to suggestions for future research. In my experience, this is the most fruitful way to find gaps. Both my Master’s paper and dissertation research questions were suggested in the future research section of other scholars’ work.

As H. L. Goodall says in Writing the New Ethnography,

To locate a gap in any scholarly literature requires that you read a lot. (emphasis original)

Goodall offers some more specific advice as well:

• Start with the most recent literature.
• Notice which things are referenced repeatedly - the references all the most recent work has in common.
• Make a chart of names, relationships to institutions, and arguments.
• Look for patterns of citations, themes, and topics.

I don’t think I can give better advice than that. I’ll close out with more from Goodall:

You are reading for the storyline. You may not be sure what you are using it for, at least not yet. But that is all right. Be patient. Ideas, and uses for them, often take time.

You are also reading to find out what is collectively written about an idea, what individual voices have to say about that collective idea, and for an opening that you can address.

There’s no shortcut, I’m afraid. You have to jump into the literature before you know what the gap is. When everything you’ve read is referencing everything else, it’s safe to trust you’ve got a good sense of the topic and know where the gaps are.

I’m back to cross-posting from my site automatically to Twitter. Everywhere else I’m going to stick with manusl cross-posting.

How are you doing, Internet? I’m obviously Not Okay, with my mom having leukemia and all, but I’m trying to do things besides worry about her anyway. I’m doing pretty well at that.

Have we talked about how much I love working for the Connected Learning Lab? Maybe we have. I’ll say a little more about it anyway. I styled myself for this type of position throughout my PhD program, in spite of having no expectation that such a position would be available. I always live a better life when I just do whatever is interesting or exciting to me and let professional opportunities arise as they may. (Woo-woo types would say this is because my Human Design type is Projector and I would not argue with them.)

My job is to read about what’s making it hard for teen librarians to support connected learning in their libraries, interview them about it, analyze a bunch of data from my reading and interviews, and work with a team to develop tools to help teen librarians with this. It is dreamy as can be. Teen librarians (and librarians who serve teens and others as well) tend to be pretty awesome, based on my encounters with them. On their best days, they want to make space for what lights teens up. (On their worst days, I would guess they probably just want to go home. Being a school or public librarian is really hard as well as being rewarding.)

I do feel a need to figure out what’s next, which is why I’m doing Jen Polk’s PhD Career Clarity program. I wouldn’t have been able to pay for this as a student, but my consulting/content development work with Quirkos paid enough that I could actually afford it. Yay!

My previous explorations with ImaginePhD have indicated that writing, publishing, and editing is a good career family given my skills and interests, and I don’t disagree. I still find myself attracted to the idea of being a freelancer, so I’m doing some thinking and planning and learning about what that would look like. The ideal situation for me would either be enough consulting to cover the bills paired with writing as a creative outlet, or some sort of dream job instead of the consulting. I don’t think I want to depend on freelance writing for my income, but I do think I want to get words out of me and in front of human people.

Blogging even on days when I don’t have A Topic in mind is a gesture toward that. So is doing Morning Pages, and the Artist’s Way more broadly. (I’m still doing that at my very glacial pace.)

I’m reading through Joanna Penn’s Author 2.0 Blueprint and the posts and books she mentions in it. I’ll probably pick Bird by Bird up soon. I thought I’d read it before, but it’s not on my list of books I’ve read. I know I have a paperback copy somewhere but I think it’s lost in a pile of stuff in the attic, so I’m going to buy the ebook for my Kobo, too.

I definitely idealize writing as an art form. I don’t know a way around that, and I’m not sure I want to. I don’t have this idea of a person who spends all their time sitting in a garret writing, because as I learned when I was doing improv, you have to go experience life if you want to make art about it. (You could make art about sitting in a garret, I suppose.) When I watched Hamilton, the thing that stood out for me that for some reason had eluded me in listening was writing as a throughline in the whole story. The lyrics “I wrote my way out” and “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” had made an impression, of course, but something about seeing it brought it out as bigger than a leitmotif. What’s bigger than a leitmotif? I don’t know. Something really big.

There was some other art that I was thinking about that has contributed to this idealization, but I don’t know what it is. Definitely the story of Donna Tartt spending so much time on her writing at Bennington College was part of it.

Anyway. I am unapologetically romantic about writing as art and craft, but very realistic about the ways in which it can be a career.

How are things going for you?

Tag yourself. I’m Arcade Fire Dad (sub in improv troupe for band). https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/what-your-favorite-sad-dad-band-says-about-you

Sent my mom the Six of Crows duology for her Kindle. Pretty pleased with myself. 📚

🔖 Read Julia Cameron Says You Can Get Creative Indoors.

My bedhead is feeling extra goth and channeling Tim Burton a little bit this morning.

🔖Read What is “Dark Academia,” and why is it trending on social media in 2022?

The Empath’s Dilemma: You won’t cry for yourself, but you cry really hard when you start to think how scared and alone the rest of your family must feel (especially because you’re pretty sure you don’t have the capacity to hold their fear and isolation).

My mom was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia this week and started chemo yesterday. If you want details, email me and I’ll send you the link to her CaringBridge site. Please forgive me if you reply and I don’t get around to saying thank you.

Key lines from “Surface Pressure”:

Give it to your sister, your sister’s older

Give her all the heavy things we can’t shoulder

Give it to your sister, your sister’s stronger

See if she can hang on a little longer

Give it to your sister, it doesn’t hurt and

See if she can handle every family burden

Watch as she buckles and bends but never breaks

Give it to your sister and never wonder

If the same pressure would’ve pulled you under

🔖 Read The Homebound Symphony by @ayjay

I’m trying to be the Homebound Symphony. Just one person sitting in my study with a computer on my lap, reading and listening and viewing, and recording and sifting and transmitting – sharing the good, the true, and the beautiful, with added commentary.

This is what I would like to do, too.

🍿 Watched Encanto.

Lovely.