Friday, June 10, 2016

Weekend Reading: The It Has Been a Good Week Edition

I have a post I really want to write, about the baggage we bring to our careers, but I'm not quite caught up enough to have had time to do it this week. Maybe next week.

It wasn't a bad week, just a busy one. I got the final files for Academaze uploaded everywhere, ready for the June 20 release. I did the initial layout for the print version of The Lilies of Dawn, and got the necessary information to the cover artist. I had the final meeting for another beta test of my "focused management check up" offering (I need a better name... but if you're curious about it, I describe it a bit more in this month's Founding Chaos newsletter, and yes I'm still open for a couple more beta testers). I also put in about 16 hours with my main client.

The week is ending on a great note, too. Today, I booked another in person session of the Take Control of Your Time workshop (the 2 hour workshop version of the seminar of the same name). And I got a contact about potential work from a networking seed I planted months ago. Happy things.

And I have some great links for you!

First of all, Vanessa Fogg, whose wonderful novelette The Lilies of Dawn will come out from Annorlunda Books at the end of July, has a story up at Metaphorosis, and it is great. Go read it!

Also, Likhain, the amazing artist who is doing the cover art for this book, has been posting work in progress images on Twitter. Here's the latest:




I can't wait to see the final image. Check out her portfolio to see why!

If all of that has you anxious to read the novelette, the advance review copies will be out in a couple of weeks. Sign up to be an advance reader.

Don't forget you can buy Don't Call It Bollywood. Buy and read it now, so that you'll be ready for the next movie watchalong! Or sign up for the GoodReads giveaway, which is running now. Because the deeper point of this book is that we can use books and movies and the like to better understand other countries and cultures, I made this giveaway open absolutely everywhere, and I'll happily pay the postage to wherever the winner lives!

This was a good week, but the freelance/entrepreneur life is not always easy, not by a longshot. Here's Ann Friedman writing brilliantly about that.

I found this NYT piece about "fixing feminism" really interesting, but not quite complete. I'm not even sure that is really a criticism. I think this is a hard subject to discuss completely, because how we think about motherhood and work is such a culturally-loaded thing. I've written before about wishing for a world that I can't quite imagine, in which family and work aren't "balanced" but... I don't know. Integrated? In harmony?

Anyway, I think what is missing from that NYT piece is an acknowledgement of how much a lot of women value their non-caregiving work. I'm sure the author sees this, and perhaps even feels it herself. But there are space limitations, and the need to focus, etc., etc.... and it all makes me feel like we never really have the full, honest conversation. Also, I think we tend to assume how we, personally, feel is universal. I'm sure I'm guilty of this, too.

Another thing missing was the extent to which mothers have always been split between caregiving and other work. I have an old weekend links post about that.

And here's another piece for the conversation I wish we could have: what stay-at-home-moms actually do all day. It isn't 100% caregiving. Laura Vanderkam recently did a project with Redbook about this, and her blog post on what they found is interesting.

OK, moving on.

So, Hillary is now the presumptive nominee. I'll admit it, I cried watching her speech. She is not perfect, her policies are not perfect. But as I've written before, I've come to find her personally inspiring. And I find this nomination meaningful. This post, from a woman I suspect is 10-15 years older than me, resonates.

I hear what my African-American friends are saying, and what some of the Black women I follow online are saying, too. Some of Hillary's specific flaws make it really hard for them to celebrate her nomination like a lot of white women are. I understand that, and can't fix that... so I will just offer this: read about Shirley Chisholm if you haven't already.

Also, we need to be careful talking about how we talk about suffrage. White women unambiguously got the vote in the US in 1920. Black women technically had it then, but in practice could not exercise it until the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Native Americans weren't even considered citizens until 1924, and so couldn't vote. Even after they were recognized as citizens, they often could not vote and it was not until 1947 that courts started ruling against barriers to their voting. Asian-Americans faced similar issues into the 50s. So, yeah, you can really only say that white women got the vote in 1920. Here's a timeline if you want to fill in the gaps of the story you were taught in school.

My last little bit of election stuff is to marvel at this week in memes.

First, Donald Trump sorta rickrolled us:




Then Hillary's social media team just owned the memes. First the "delete your account" one:




And then the "Thanks, Obama" one:




This is all just... weird for me. I'm too old.

This is a neat story about some cool pottery... and the image on the top vase is one that all Southern Californians will recognize. (H/t to Badmomgoodmom for sending me that, and while you're at her site, check out this post about providing infrastructure.)

Here is a cool, but bittersweet, story about a bit of Harry Potter in the real world.

Indeed:


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1 comment:

  1. Revanche1:23 PM

    Daycare pick-up indeed! Thanks for so many links! I got so busy I forgot to come back and comment. Congrats on another booking!

    ReplyDelete

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