annie's microblog

We have a cute (reseller) Lego store in our downtown area. I learned you can rent the entire store out for a couple of hours, reasonable price. I wasn’t thinking about hosting a holiday party but I might have to throw a Lego party now for me and my friends. Maybe I’ll let my kids come too.

2 good reminders from my boss, on a team call yesterday:

“What we don’t do matters as much as what we do.”

“Often what helps isn’t adding more but really using what we already have.”

Related: In September, after 20+ years of freelancing, I went full-time with a longtime + favorite client (Teamup Calendar). I’m loving it. It’s really nice to focus. It still feels funny to say I have a “boss.”

Also also. There was a wrestler on an opposing team who didn’t have legs. No legs. Amazing to watch him holding his own, wrestling these kids with all their limbs. Then he won a match and the place exploded. His absolute roar of accomplishment and his team’s joy. Something I will not forget.

Just spent 7 hours after a wrestling meet. WOW this sports parenting stuff is not kidding around.

I want to get a game to play with my kids but…. we’re not really board game people. We play cards against humanity but are all kind of tired of that. We have exploding kittens too but it wasn’t a hit. Any recommendations for teen+adult games that are funny and move fast?

In a fractal conception, I am a cell-sized unit of a human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by How I am,, as much as with the things I do. This means actually being in my life, and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making.

—adrienne maree brown, emergent strategy

Finished reading: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides 📚

There’s this one song by BENEE that starts with the line: “That was a waste of f***ing time.” And that line sums up how I feel about this book.

Didn’t like any of the characters, the twist was haphazard, timing was off, I am annoyed, goodbye.

Finished reading: The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman 📚

Hoffman is good at the right amount of specificity. Some writers kill me with page-long descriptions of every single thing while others seem to jump over key details that could use a little more attention. I’m always satisfied with Hoffman’s writing. Enough details to make the characters real and the story visceral; no over-explaining as if she doesn’t trust her readers.
This book is a story of two Jewish girls escaping (and resisting) the Nazi regime, woven with surreal elements and magic that is as much about the strength of love as it is about ✨Magic.✨

Finished reading: Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey 📚

A random grab from my last used book haul. A fun read, good world-building. The characters were all a bit flat (including our heroine) and some of those big crisis moments and plot points resolved a little too neatly (okay, all of them). Still enjoyable.

Okay so here’s the thing about being consistent: you can be inconsistent about it and it still works.

Like this:

You can write for 20 minutes today and 1 hour tomorrow and then not at all for 3 days and then for 10 minutes (grumpily) and then for an whole hour again the next day and then you can pretend to write for 20-30 minutes while just staring at the same paragraph the day after and you can keep kind of going in that fashion and it will add up to consistency over time.

You can chip away at something for a little bit and then a lot and then not at all and then come back at it again and you can have all sorts of loops and twirls and pauses and ups and downs and uncertainties and holds and sprints and slogs and it will still add up to a pattern of consistency.

For me, this is a really helpful concept.

Progress happens at many speeds.

What looks like inconsistent action in the short-term looks (and is) surprisingly consistent and effective in the long-term.

There are periods of both high and low productivity. They feel extreme right next to each other: A good day! Yes! I win! Ah! Oh no, such a bad day! I lose!

But the extremes flatten out when the graph stretches over a longer period. It doesn’t look like falling off a cliff. It looks like moving over softly rolling hills.

What matters is that 1) there’s some movement and 2) it’s mostly going in the same direction. Even if you’re doing the 2 steps forward, 1 1/2 steps back shuffle, you’re still shuffling forward. What’s the rush? Dancing is fun.

Life is just a bunch of little things stacked up.

Early mornings, fresh coffee, fresh air, movement, satisfying work, time for writing, good food, music, laughter with my kids, reading, delicious beverages, time with friends, shared interests, clever entertainment, soft blankets, big smiles, doing hard things, finding comfort, learning…

Simple accumulated pleasures make for a rich and beautiful life. 

Kept one child home from school today: fever, stomach unwell. Second child called for a pickup with the same symptoms. En route, third child texted me for the same reason. 3 out of 4 kids down now. I am disinfecting everything and praying to all the gods, PLEASE DO NOT LET ME GET THIS.

I am what I am doing right now:

I am my own best souvenir. I was in no danger of forgetting that four years of my life, and I am in no danger of being anything other than the person who resulted from those four years.

And beyond that, I am comfortable, maybe even relieved, to untether from things that might cause me to create too sturdy and binding a connection from some past time to this one.

ᔥ @pdxmph

Finished reading: For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten 📚

A random pick from my last library visit. This fantasy has a lot going for it if you like a certain type of fantasy: atmospheric (but not gothic) reworked folklore with YA-level romance. I liked the characters, the centrality of women, and the world itself. I got tired of the very detailed atmospheric/emotive writing. I don’t need a full paragraph about the twitch of her hand against the rough bark of the tree on every page. This felt like a book written by someone who is very much in love with the way they can play with language. There were some great, creative sections of writing but halfway through the book I felt like yelling, “We get it, you can write a lush description, you like to use a noun as a verb! Okay!”

Finished reading: Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See 📚
I enjoyed this one. An easy read inspired by “the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China.”