- Photo series of the week: Meet Garfi, the world’s angriest cat. Grumpy Cat has some new competition.
- Sending Love from a Lifeboat. One author’s love letter to the book that changed her life. “It matters to see yourself in a book. It matters to be told, either by the author in person or through a character, that you are okay. That not having a label doesn’t make you less worthy of love or a community. That you are defined more by what you love than what you hate.”
- Need a hug? Check out The Nicest Place on the Internet.
- Virtual violence: it’s not just for internet celebrities. “This isn’t something that’s limited to a subculture of gaming or tech or startups. This is a widespread phenomenon that’s simply the most apparent in those places right now. And until people understand that, we’re not going to move past it.”
- 17 Unfortunate Struggles All Ambitious Women Have To Deal With.
- The actual worst job in tech: workers employed to soak up the worst of humanity in order to protect the rest of us.
- No. No, we are not excused. “You don’t get a free pass just because you alert your partner to your emotional baggage and bad behavioral patterns. It doesn’t make you a better partner and grant you a pardon from the negative things that you do. In fact, it makes you a worse partner because you are aware that your issues negatively effect those around you and, yet, you fail (or refuse, take your pick) to do anything about it.” Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Agreed.
- Why You Should Hang Out With + Date People You Admire. “There were people whose names required the unspoken asterisks “You’ve just got to get to know him” and “She’s an acquired taste” and “She’s a lot better when she’s sober.” … I liked them! They had redeeming qualities – they were funny or interesting or smart – but they also pretty regularly engaged in choices and behavior that made me want to cross the room and pretend I didn’t know them.”
- Two good, somewhat opposing posts about writing magic systems in fantasy books: Magic That Feels Like Magic and Why does magic need so many rules? I agree more with the first one.
- Not 100% happy: On accepting the parts of the job you don’t like.
- The Surprising Importance of Doing Nothing.
- I’ve also got 20 Free Handwritten Fonts for you over on my freelance blog.
Things of Note:
Well, birthday celebrations are officially over. I stretched it out as long as I could, and there may be one or two presents still on their way to me in the mail, but all of the event-type happenings are done. Game night this past weekend was fun, as was book club the next day. And I’ve been making progress on shop stuff- finally had the photo shoot for the S and some XS shirts, so there are more on-model photos for shop listings. And I’ve been printing up an xmas-themed storm. I even bought xmas-y props for when I do the photo shoot for those, which (ideally) would be Thursday this week.
And all today I’m busy with the Freelance Conference. It’s my first professional conference (i.e. not a blogging conference) so we’ll see how it goes.
What’s happening in your world lately?
