The Weekly Wrap #59

05.15.2022

I've never been one to specialize. I find that I am far too interested in far too many things for that.

I started working on the strategic planning for a revamp of my website and found that I could, at best, manage to clump my professional work into three major chunks: outreach and marketing, leadership and management, and information literacy and instruction. Within those categories are a ton of subtopics like customer service, productivity, and photography. 

I don't know how to specialize my work... and I don't want to.

I find that all the aspects of what I do roll into one another. Knowing how to provide effective customer service increases my leadership skills which, in turn, leads me to be more productive, which allows me to focus on creating new things for our social media, which allows me to share what I've learned with others, which helps me improve my teaching skills, and on and on and on.

I see my work as one big mush of things and I love it all. I would be loathe to give any of it up.

It's the same with my personal interests. I jump from reading about calligraphy, to life management, to cooking, to parenting, to history, to minimalism. My reading list abounds what random titles that caught my eye in the moment.

I thrive on having a variety of interesting things to learn. It's one reason I write this. I can flit from one idea to another, never being bored of learning new things.

Are you a generalist or a specialist?

Thank you to everyone who completed the poll last week. It offered me a nice vibe check on where folks stand on a second newsletter and subscription model. From what I learned and my own desire to write more, I will start a second weekly post in a few weeks. It will land in your inbox on Thursdays. This post will be FREE for the time being but will eventually go behind a paywall. I will set the rates at Substack’s minimum of $30/year and $5/month. Also, I will offer a no questions asked gift subscription option. I’m basically only doing this to fuel my own desire to pay for other newsletter subscriptions.

I had the misfortune of a rare, sleepless night this week. When this happens, I can usually get myself to fall asleep my reading by booklight. Didn’t work. I ended up binging over a hundred pages of A Court of Silver Flames because I hit a really good spot that made it hard to put down. I’ve got like 10 pages left in this book and I’m already eager for the next title in the series.

• Testing the best ways to ripen an avocado. [Kitchn]

• When it comes to parenting decisions, where you raise kids matters. Everything else? Eh. [The Atlantic - may be paywalled]

• On how recipe writing has changed. [David Lebovitz]

• Ways to make work more fun. [HBR - may be paywalled]

• I love goldfish crackers and I love Old Bay seasoning, but I'm not sure about this. [NBC4]

• We build too much parking. [The Deleted Scenes]

• Even science says trust women. [Short Wave]

• Adding this magical sounding underground garden to my list of places to visit. [Atlas Obscura]

• We're getting old and it's kind of a problem. [The Indicator]

• Misinformation kills. [Short Wave]

• A lot lives in the shadows of the Constitution. [Throughline]

• How inflation may personally impact you. [The Daily]

• The emerging science of ASMR. [Science Vs]

• We have a list of movies that we want to watch one day. It's not long, but what's left on the list are things you have to be in the mood to watch. We have not been in the mood. So, in our desire to watch something not too serious, we went off list . That led us to stream The Protege. It's a hitman narrative starring Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, and, in a surprising choice, Michael Keaton. Aside from some weird plot holes and my standing issues with movie age pairings, it was a good movie. Lots of (almost) believable action, well acted, and great production. [Netflix]

• We watched one of the latest entries in the "Liam Neeson Punching Things" genre: The Marksman. It also tied right into our trend of watching things in the Narcos field.  The film was about what you'd expect. The writing was strained and the acting was just fine. I will say, it did a decent job of walking a fine line with the politics of Neeson's character owning a ranch on the border.  [Amazon Prime]

• Hand harvesting salt from a lake in Senegal. This is a fascinating look at how the work is done and how the high salinity of the lake came to be. [Eater]

• While the Husband was out of town this week, I decided to watch The New Pope. It's an artistic fever dream of a show with incredible writing, acting, and narrative. Profoundly weird, but profoundly good. [HBO]

• For my meal prep this week, I made lemony cucumber couscous salad because it let me combine a lot of flavors I love in one bowl. This dish was refreshing with great textures. Perfect for the warming weather. I did bother with the parsley this time... but I just went ahead and tossed in the whole bunch. [Budget Bytes]​

I needed a picture to celebrate the end of finals. This one seemed festive enough.

The Husband got on an airplane for a business trip this week. It was the first time either one of us has flown since the pandemic started. That also meant it was the first time I used FlightAware since the pandemic started. I love how easy this website makes it to track delays and where an inbound flight may be coming from. Makes scheduling and logistics so much easier.

I’m presenting at a local conference in two weeks. Two presentations actually - one in a group and one by myself. Gotta spend some time working on my slide decks.