On nannying, childhood nostalgia, and complexity

Recently, I have been spending a decent amount of my time looking after small children who are not my own. The work I do usually involves balancing housework jobs like cooking and folding clothes with conversations about Beyblades and princesses, being the mediator in physical altercations, and helping take ‘my’ children to after school activities. I’m fortunate to get paid to do this; it’s the kind of work that is generally done for no pay, particularly by women, across the world. It isn’t something that requires any training or expertise, yet it is in reality often challenging and requires skill and finesse.

how to give feedback on your friend’s writing (and stay friends)

hello humans! it is a rainy morning, I am in lockdown, life feels abnormal and normal all at once. one adbantage of habing everything interrupted for the time being is that I have more time for reading and writing. This is a good thing! I have also have several friends who are using the time to write, and have some writing buddies, who I will be sending writing to. But it’s hard to give and recive feedback when you know someone in a non professional way and so, from years of doing this, here are some ideas.

I would like to read more

I use pocket and it’s basically changed my life. recently, they emailed me to say that I had 715 unread articles. ‘not bad, I thought ‘7 articles a day for the next 100 days and I’ll have read them all’. Then I realised that I hae been warped by the promise of endless content, and that I was probably not going to read all of these hundreds of articles, many of which are thousands of words long.

September Wrap Up

Shanti: It is September, I am tired, and Virtually Read continues to be neglected. Still, on the whole, August has been a rather good month, a mix of frantic work and deep rest. I’ve had a few of those moments where you are just filled with complete, utter gladness, that sense that everything is right in the world and always will be, and those are the moments that make it all worth it.

November Wrap Up

November is over, and we’re into the last month of the year. Shar and I are done with exams and uni and all that and we’re both working (mostly Shar) and mooching around (mostly me) and learning to drive on the open road (Shar) and learning to drive in the city (me), and November was a strange time and quite busy but not unpleasant, mostly.

February 2018 wrap up

It hasn’t been that long since we wrote our last roundup, but we’re still keen on the concept and actually want to commit to it. Also, casual reminder that Shar wrote, like, 2 posts last month and you should read them. This was our February!

What counts as productive?

Hi Differentialists! This is the fourth installment of our series on productivity, and probably the last for a little while. A while ago, I read this post on the lovely Holly’s blog. She talks about how the phrase ‘at least you’re reading’ is a problem—why should it matter what sort of books you read? And for the most part, I agree with her. However, her post made me think about what I assume are useful ways to spend my time. Namely, youtube. The thing is, if I watch an educational video, like crash course or TED-Ed, I feel like I’m spending my time well and learning about the world. If I watch a comedy skit I’ve already seen twice, I feel like I’m wasting my time.

Loving productivity (and why that’s a problem)

I love being productive. I think most people do. Getting stuff done feels good. At the end of every day, I like to be able to look back and think: I did something today. This has an unfortunate flipside, however: I am not good at taking breaks. This is not to say that I don’t take breaks. I procrastinate on youtube and read books instead of doing work and check twitter (and check it again) (and wish I had something to say but I usually don’t). But I inevitably feel guilty about this.

Productivity and me, a difficult relationship|Productivity

Goooooooood time of day, Differentialists! So today I’m going to talk about something which is close to my heart…laziness. I love laziness so much that I did a school project on it. That is not a joke, and yes, I had permission, and I also had fun and I did this whole oral performance for it and stuff…..Anyway, my fascinating research into laziness is not the point here. The point is that afterwards many people told me that it was a stupid thing for me to do, because I am not lazy. (also I realized that I have more to say about productivity so it’s gonna be a mini-series! You may have already seen Shar’s post on this!)