Kimberly Hirsh

🔖 Read Funerals are expensive, broken and exploitative. They have to change

I love what Sarah Chavez says:

Your death matters. You can choose something that will reflect the values and beliefs that you held in your life, and translate them into your death.

Information is my love language.

This post contains minor spoilers for Star Trek Discovery Season 4 Episode 2, “Anomaly.”

Near the end of the latest episode of Discovery, Lt. Tilly tells Dr. Culbert that something feels off about herself, and that she’d like to talk to him about it in a professional context sometime.

This feels to me like a clear indication that Tilly is dealing with depression, anxiety, or both, and I’m very interested in following where this goes, especially as I read Tilly as my own sort of Discovery-avatar.

Over at Keith R. A. DeCandido’s recap for Tor.com, a commenter says,

The best thread for later is Tilly. Does she miss her mother? Is it about all the stress and loss and responsibility they’ve had? Mental health is an all too often ignored issue, so I hope they do it justice.

I, too, hope they do it justice, but what I don’t need is for there to be something Tilly’s depression is “about.” There certainly are things that can trigger depression, but the depression itself isn’t always a response to trauma. Sometimes it just happens because your body isn’t producing the chemicals it needs to.

I would love to see Tilly work through identifying how she’s feeling, struggling to decide between treatment options (or whether to go beyond talk therapy at all), and dealing with the consequences of whatever treatment she chooses. I’d also just love to see what mental health care looks like in the 32nd century.

But I don’t need there to be a reason she’s depressed.

Because depression doesn’t require a reason to appear.

Anybody else get a little Billy-Crystal-as-Miracle-Max vibe from Brent Spiner’s performance as very-old Dr. Noonian Soong? 🖖🏻📺

Big Kimberly Energy, according to W., is writing a full parody libretto for a musical.

Currently reading: The Artist’s Way - Spiritual Electricity: The Basic Principles by Julia Cameron 📚

Bless Linda Holmes and her holiday movie guides.

I want to mark Stephen Sondheim’s passing with a story about his influence in my life but there are too many little moments to sum it all up. What a joy to have had him in the world as long as we did.

Hello world. Imagine I’m interested in fountain pens but am a complete beginner. Where would you tell me to go to learn more? What would your advice be? How do I get started? ✒️🖋️

Some international fans will be getting new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery starting Friday, Yay!

Currently reading: The Artist’s Way - Introduction by Julia Cameron 📚

Finished: The Artist’s Way - Introduction by Julia Cameron. 📚

Cameron’s introduction is very introducey, setting a foundation for understanding the work of The Artist’s Way and explaining her own story. My favorite quote from this section is probably “Accumulate pages, not judgments.” (p. xv)

Cameron spends a fair amount of time here talking about her use of the term “God” in the book, and how it’s there because this is a spiritual path but you don’t need to be a theist to follow it. She suggests substituting something like “good orderly direction” or “flow” if “God” makes you uncomfortable.

I think I’m going to substitute “Cosmic Art Mom.”

I am agnostic, humanist, and a bit witchy. I haven’t identified as Christian for a very long time, and I’m no fan of the idea of a sky bully, but from a tiny age I believed in a Sky Mom, and I kind of still do.

My earth mom is a theologian by training, and taught me a lot about who God is supposed to be before I ever went to church. When I finally went to a church and they kept referring to God as “he,” I was outraged. I said, “No! God is a Mommy!” because everything my mom said - creation, unconditional love - these things were, in my mind, things moms did.

I didn’t know I was doing the toddler version of Goddess Spirituality, but I pretty much was. In spite of my agnosticism, I still fall pretty squarely somewhere on the Goddess movement spectrum. I have an intuitive sense that there is a Sky Mom - or maybe I’ll just stick with Cosmic Mom from now on - out there looking out for me. I can get a bit Deist about it at times because obviously stuff goes wrong for me specifically and the world at large - but especially now that I’m a mom, I kind of get it. Moms mess up. Our attention wanders sometimes.

Like many ancient deities, Cosmic Mom can bear a variety of epithets. I’ll probably imagine Cosmic Art Mom, who, for the record, is pretty much a deified Carrie Fisher, as I work through The Artist’s Way.

What do you think of when you see “God” in The Artist’s Way?

Reading STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST again and when Austin Kleon described Patti Smith pretending to be an artist I thought “Cool, I’ll pretend to be a writer” and now I’m doing a Google image search for writer. So far it’s mostly disembodied hands writing in notebooks, so I’m on track.

🔖Read “How the Real Estate Boom Left Black Neighborhoods Behind”.

This is a long & valuable read. I’m researching how I can contribute to reinvestment without getting all white savior. 🏡

I mentioned in September that I was going through the Artist’s Way. I got about three weeks in when I realized I was only doing morning pages and reading, but not doing artist dates or any of the exercises. My motivational tendency is obliger, so I thought maybe if I were doing it in community, I’d do better.

But then I thought about organizing a whole community and I got weary immediately. I looked over Julia Cameron’s Guide for Starting Creative Clusters and registered a big old NOPE.

So I’m planning to do it MY way.

My life mantra is WHAT I CAN, WHEN I CAN.

I’m inviting you to participate. Here’s how it’s going to work.

1. I’m going to do morning pages as often as I can, but I’ll be keeping them to myself. I might occasionally blog about what I’m learning from doing them.
2. I’m going to do Artist Dates as often as I can. I’ll blog about them, with what I did, and my response to it.
3. I will end both morning pages and Artist Dates posts with a question about how they’re going for you, what you did, and what you’re getting out of them. You will be able to reply in one of a few ways:
   • through a Micro.blog reply
   • through an IndieWeb webmention
   • through Disqus comments
   • through Twitter replies
   • through Facebook replies (yes, I’m even going to try this on Facebook)
4. I’ll essentially do the same process for exercises, writing about my response to them and maybe even my answers, then asking if you did the exercise and how it worked out for you. You can reply in the same ways mentioned above.

I’m not in a place where I feel good about confining myself to a 12-week schedule, and I know if I try to turn it into 12 months or something I’ll lose steam around the 8 month mark, so instead, I’m just going to do it WHEN I CAN. Here’s what that will look like:

1. I will make a short post when I start a chapter/week.
2. I will make a short post when I finish a chapter/week.
3. And all the exercises and stuff above, I’ll make a note of what chapter/week it’s from.

Here are the rules to participate:

1. Do what you can, when you can.
2. Avoid trying to fix people’s problems or offer advice; “listen” to understand. I encourage you to respond, but try not to have it be advice-focused.

That’s it. I really hope you’ll join me.

📚💬 “Never send a scholar who studies dystopias to a conference with futuristic themes.” Kelly J. Baker, SEXISM ED

🔖

Every King Arthur Retelling Is Fanfic About Who Gets to Be Legendary tor.com

Read: www.tor.com

Tracy Deonn shares some important truths about how stories work and what “authentic” means.

🔖

Will Real Estate Ever Be Normal Again? - The New York Times nytimes.com

Read: www.nytimes.com

Investors’ attitudes gross me out. This same thing is happening in my city.

🔖 Read

Catapult | Minor Arcana | Marissa Levien catapult.co

Read: catapult.co

This is a really beautiful short story.

📚 Started reading OUTLANDER and if my spouse finds my interest in my scholarship as tiresome as Claire finds Frank’s, I wish he and his kilted flake much happiness. (My spouse LIKES that I’m a scholar so we’re okay.)

I watched Star Trek Discovery 4x01 “Kobayashi Maru” last night and I have a lot of feelings. I’m happy to chat if you’d like to. Replies may contain spoilers. 🖖🏻📺

Beautiful Eclipse medicine spread from Lindsay Mack with The Moonchild Tarot.

Time to trust my mind, let go of worries about love, move forward in intuition, carry my spark forward, & know that when I have many wands, I can set them down & warm myself by their light and heat.

How to Transform from Mom Kimberly to Professional Kimberly:

1. Replace t-shirt with dress.
2. Add cardigan.
3. Extra hair brushing.

Tada!

Okay I watched the Season 4 premiere of Star Trek: Discovery and now I need ALL the Detmer & Owo friendfic.

From now on whenever you meet a couple, you are required to ask: Which of you is the Stamets & which of you is the Culbert? (I’m the Stamets AND the Culbert. W. is the Emperor Georgiou.)🖖🏻#StarTrekDiscovery