Saving Time

Apparently this meme has been making the rounds for some time, but I saw it for the first time today, and almost fell out of my chair laughing. So this is the first place I thought to share it. Naturally.

😀

Mainly because my hate for the idiocy of DST is epic. Maybe even legendary. There is research that proves it’s bad for our health, and that gets reported regularly this time of year. The best framing of this nonsense, though is this:

‘Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.’

Not sure which native tribe produced that fount of wisdom, but it’s posted on the Lakotah’s site, so that’s where I’ll give credit.

The rest of the week, though, I was reading more about psychology. I learned about the Ben Franklin Effect, wherein if you ask a person for a favor, that person is more likely to think of you as a friend. As the psychologist leading the session explained: It’s thought that our brains can’t handle the cognitive dissonance of having done something nice for someone without thereafter imagining friendship to have been the underlying motivation. A different psychologist, studying academic achievement, wrote almost a decade ago, that based purely on this measure, our world should be a matriarchy. So the people at Nautilus went to interview her to follow up. Turns out there are some interesting nuances to the choices women make and the things they prioritize in their lives that could be an explanation for why there aren’t more women in senior leadership roles. From the other side of that equation, there was a thoughtful piece on work-related depression, and things that could cause it–including a sense of disempowerment, lack of meaningful work, and toxic work relationships. Finally, a cartoonist featured in Mental Floss gave some powerful insights into the different mindsets of apology vs. thankfulness.

Apart from learning things, I spent yesterday volunteering my time at my company’s Women In Computing event. I built almost 50 Google Cardboard devices as part of one of the sessions teaching about how 3D vision works in 2D environments. It was exciting and funny to hear the girls exclaim things like: “This is part of your JOB?? You have the best job, ever!” We may have succeeded in part of our mission, based on those comments. I hope the girls stick to their enthusiasm.

The other excitement of the week: The ever-excellent Kelley York, of x-potions designs, created a logo for me:

I love everything about it, so you’ll be seeing it anywhere you see my work.

In my free time… (Friday night!) I read a new novella by Ekaterine Xia, Goddess in Waiting. It took things I love about fractured fairy tales and upped the ante: This is the story of a minor goddess in the Chinese pantheon, married to Thanatos (Greek god of death), who has accepted her “fall” into humanity, but learns she has to fight for her god-hood. The pieces about (minor spoiler) her miscarriage ripped me to shreds and the ending would be all of my wishes fulfilled, but the story in between involved Ra (the sun goddess), Gaia, and several of the archangels trying to address the underlying question of whether Earth were Ascending at a rate commensurate with its achievement of space travel. There was plenty of fertile ground for my brain. I would highly recommend this book for its blurring the lines between fantasy and scifi and its ability to see parallels across cultures.

On the editing front, I fought through another 25 pages. I’m getting closer and closer to halfway done, so I keep imagining it might get easier. But then my editor throws me another suggestion, and for the moment, I’m back at the beginning, weaving in additional early clues. My phone says I averaged 4,051 steps last week, back up in the acceptable realm of exercise for us. Sleeping, though, remained stubbornly at 6 hours and 10 minutes per night.

So we’re down to the final 9 days of this Round. I’m at least glad I’m back in the habit of facing my manuscripts regularly during the week, but I’m not sure I’ll finish the first book in time for the end of the Round. Regardless, I’ll be checking in with my ROW80 mates and returning again next week to report on my progress.