• The Importance of Having a Website – yes! Dana nailed this one. I may have to start referring certain clients to that article.
• A very gentle PSA to anyone who may be writing a trend piece about millennials. Also yes! “During our childhoods, unemployment was low, houses gained in value, a bachelor’s degree left you prepared for a variety of employment opportunities and investing was a sound decision. Now all of those things aren’t the case. It’s our job to deal with that, and that’s fine. Generations have faced much worse. But it’s easy to distrust a system that melted down so spectacularly just as it was time for us to buy into it.”
• Silhouette Man Wonders What is Wrong with Americans.
• USA Ranked [Only] 23rd in World for Time Spent Reading.
• American Way of Birth, Costliest in the World
• 18 Babies Experiencing Things For The First Time. Too funny.
• Feel Like a Fraud? At Times, Maybe You Should. Some interesting background on impostor syndrome.
• A Guide To Being Alone Without Being Lonely
• Pope’s Reform Path: Francis Shakes Up Church Establishment. Good!
• Genetic Modification: Seed Companies Fight Back
• Definitions of Intimacy.
• What Seems Obvious to You Could Help Someone Else
• 6 Tips for Dealing with an Angry Customer. Good advice.
• Let’s Address the Pit Bull in the Room. Yes. My Sienna is mostly pit, and she is a sweetie.
• Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood.
• My friend group has a case of the Creepy Dude. How do we clear that up? This. A million times this.

Things of Note:

Hooey, there’s a link round-up for you. Lots of interesting reads floating around the interwebs this week.

Offline, life is proceeding as usual. I’ve been working a lot on shop stuff, but my real job keeps interfering. Pssh. That whole needing to get paid thing. 🙂 But really. I just need to trim some paper prints and have a big ol’ photo shoot session, and then I can get them up in the shop. I have a mini craft show party thing coming up in August, so I’m trying to build up a good inventory of paper prints. This may have involved buying a lot of handmade textured paper, and getting it cut into the appropriate sizes, and making an inventory spreadsheet, and getting a big ol’ flat-file-like set of drawers to store it all in, which may have required completely cleaning my office and reorganizing in order to have room for it. Maybe. But I felt like it would make the production process go much quicker, and so far it has.

Other than that, next week is beach vacation!!! A week from today I will be sitting on the beach on Mustang Island here in Texas. It has been far too long since I’ve been to a real beach. Ocean! I am coming for you! I’m going to try to schedule some posts for while I’m gone, but the week before an announced vacation is always hectic for my freelancing business because everyone suddenly remembers I’m going out of town and has a dozen last minute things they absolutely need. So, we’ll see.

How are things in your life lately? Any vacations coming up that you’re excited about?