what u like in yourself
how 'bout we invest in that ⏲
Way more than a few things made me pay attention this week. Some stuff I haven’t even had time to truly experience, because I’ve been trying to make more things and do more things. I know you understand: if I sit up and read all the time, or watch Pennyworth and Lifetime’s Salt-N-Pepa movie and Cobra Kai and One Night in Miami and stuff all the time, I won’t work my own creativity. I love to feel inspired, but I know from experience that too much intake (even when it’s brilliant), leads to not enough imaginative (or administrative) output of my own. My workflow suffers. So I try to find a balance — being disciplined about scrolling (difficult), forcing myself (with a timer) to deeply focus on specific projects for specified lengths of time, jotting down ideas and sentences even when it’s inconvenient — but all of this is a lifelong process of figuring stuff out. And we all have our different tricks and hacks.
7-ish things that caught my eye this week:
1) “I have no idea how old I am. Believe it or not, I have no paper that says I was ever born…Maybe that’s why they call me a legend, because I don’t really exist.” — Eartha Kitt, from a whole appreciation of her inVanity Fair.
2) Shake Shack’s ‘lazy’ take on Korean fried chicken. And while we’re on food, here’s a bit abut how black soldiers brought soul food to the world.
3) Black women, fishing for fish, and winning.
4) “I lost my appetite because of Covid. This Sichuan flavor brought it back.”
5) Where Vice President Kamala is living until her real DC residence is ready.
6) This list: the ten best political books of 2020 — by Black women. Also: I keep a space at Bookshop — basically books I love, need to read or re-read, cookbooks featuring everything from corn fritters to latkes to tamales, my fave books about women in music, etcetera. It’s here.
7) And these ⬇️ because I like my own handwriting, and I want to push it. So I invested in this set.
Hank Aaron, may you rest in peace.
please be well and safe in these wild times