Sunday Links

Shopping

Reading

  • Recommendations for Polyamory in Fiction – a fantastic place to start for anyone doing reader’s advisory in alternative sexuality/alternative relationship styles, or if you’re interested in learning more. Includes triads and Poly V relationships only1 .

  • Stacy London, Aging, and Style: Her Story – I’ve been a fan of Stacy London’s since I first saw her on “What Not to Wear”, though sometimes it felt like the rules passed on to contestants rigidly enforced a New York sense of style. London now admits that the style rules she put forth as a 32 year old aren’t sustainable once you reach a certain age, and I found that candour refreshing. I still want to perform (through a queer femme lens) but it’s a challenge when you’re managing chronic illnesses, thinning hair, and other signs of aging.

  • Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s Brief but Spectacular take on fearless black art and being true to yourself.

  • I often sing the “Woe is me, I’m eternally dateless” song2, so it was refreshing to read Allison P. Davis’ What I Learned Tindering My Way Across Europe. Maybe I should renew my passport and buy a Eurail pass.

Tweet of the Week

  1. Check this glossary of poly terms for more information – https://www.morethantwo.com/polyglossary.html ↩

  2. A song that takes on a melancholy, minor key when you’re a black woman – https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/ ↩

Things I’ve Learned as a Manager

What Has Being A Manager Taught Me About Work?

  • Manage expectations, manage projects, but don’t manage time
    • Maker’s Schedule: fewer meetings, shorter meetings, more time for focused, uninterrupted work
    • Manager’s Schedule: for bosses. Highly structured, always know where you’re going next 1
  • Give people more responsibility, flexibility, and power
  • Stay out of the weeds. Less detail is better in most cases.
  • Create an environment where people can thrive
  • Always believe in your staff, especially when they don’t believe in themselves
  • My fundamental responsibility is to equip people with the tools they need to succeed.

What Has Being A Manager Taught Me About Myself?

  • I’m a better manager when my team feels empowered, listened to, and respected.
  • Managing people’s emotional frailties and personal problems will always be difficult for me, as I value privacy, and don’t want to meddle.
  • There is such a thing as being too aloof.
  • You will either learn to get over your own insecurities/imposter syndrome, or you will fail.
  • The line between too much process and too little is paper-thin: too much process and projects become mired in overhead. Too little, and people will lose their way.
  • Being a manager highlights the worst parts of my cynical, distrustful nature.
  • Being a manager highlights the best parts of my empathetic, ride-or-die nature.
  • I am happiest when I am leading — not managing — others.
  1. http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html ↩

Sunday Links

Shopping

Elizabeth Suzann Artist Dress

suzann-artist-dress

In One Size Regular and One Size Plus (though the plus only runs up to size 16). It’s rare that I wish I could sew/I wish I were thinner. This is one of those times. $255 USD.

Fluevog Cleo Mary Janes

fluevog-cleo

The lower heel version of my beloved purple and orange Zazas that I had to give up after knee surgery. My birthday’s coming up, and I’m thinking I should treat myself. $345 CAD.

Poppy Barley Chelsea Boot in Militaire

poppy-barley-chelsea-boot

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Poppy Barley is a Canadian (!) shoe manufacturer — do we call them cobblers or designers? — who makes handmade, fashionable, and comfortable flats, ankle boots, tall boots, and brogues in women’s sizes 5-12. They also make men’s shoes if that’s your thing. There’s a Poppy Barley pop-up boutique scheduled in Vancouver on September 8, and I’ll be going. $375 CAD.

Stalogy 365 Days Notebook – B5 Size

stalogy-365-notebook-interior

I’m obsessed with good stationery, and while my success with Bullet Journaling has been mixed, keeping a paper journal for longer entries has worked out pretty well. What I like about these notebooks is that you can date the pages by circling or highlighting the month/day at the top of the page, or you can leave them blank in the event that your entries cover more than one page. It doesn’t hurt that the paper is very similar to Tomoe River paper, which is notoriously thin, light, yet fountain pen friendly. $42 CAD at Wonderpens, but can be found cheaper on various Amazon sites and at JetPens.

Reading

I’m deeply skeptical of these pop-Christian ministries, perhaps more skeptical of traditional Christianity, even.

N.K. Jemisin and the politics of prose.

Reactionary movements can’t sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on. And when they keep using the same tactics over and over again, I don’t know that that’s sustainable.

Slim-hipped androgynes can take my stretch denim when they pry it off my ample backside and super-thick thighs.

Tweet of the Week

RIP Gene Wilder.

What’s The Buzz, Tell Me What’s-a-Happening

This space has been very quiet for a while now. I make no apologies for that as I often go through periods where I don’t write anything for months. A few weeks ago, I decided to try deleting all entries that were published before 2011, but instead I managed to delete all of my entries from 2016 instead. Since I don’t have backups, why not try to create some new content instead?

We’ll see how long this lasts.

Reading/Watching/Listening

Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down is a beautiful mess. Lovesick (the sitcom formerly known as Scrotal Recall) is far better than it’s juvenile title indicates. I’m only up to my ankles in N.K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate, the second novel in her The Broken Earth trilogy, but it feels as if I’m slowly being consumed by the world Jemisin has built. Is polyamory a sexual orientation? I remain unconvinced. Hey – you’re an adult: stop making people do your work for you and LOOK IT UP. The biggest obstacle to diversity in libraries is we don’t really want it.

Thinking About

If being a “good girl” has gotten me nowhere, why can’t I bring myself to be a “bad girl”? Just how difficult is it to unlearn cultural conditioning and societal expectations?

Tweet of the Week

Capture Bonding & Professional Respectability

Many of us have made a life of hoping to get chosen for jobs, chosen for awards, chosen for acceptance from people, structures and corporations bred on white supremacy. We’re hoping to get chosen by people who can not see us. Knowing that they hate and terrorize us doesn’t stop us from wanting to get chosen. That’s the crazy thing. Everything about this country told Grandma, a black woman born in Central Mississippi in 1920s, to love, honor and forgive white folks. And this country still tells me, a black boy born in Mississippi in the 1970s, to titillate and tend to the emotional, psychological and spiritual needs of white people in my work.

Kiese Laymon makes me want to hang up my keyboard and forget about writing on the regular. His piece for The Guardian, “Black churches taught us to forgive white people. We learned to shame ourselves” is no exception.

As I’m inclined to do, I try to relate articles like this with my experience as a black professional in a predominately white profession. My reluctance to put myself forward for jobs, speaking opportunities, or even acceptance from people is my way of staging resistance. Why participate in rituals and structures that aren’t designed with me in mind, and are only invested in supporting my success if I perform in such a way that makes me visible to them? This resistance often comes with a high price; visibility and professional accolades sometimes come at the expense of my own sense of worth.

We bond with our captors1, develop sympathy for them, and become convinced that their way is the only way. The indignities and traumas continue to mount, but we smile, we dance, we submit papers and answer calls for proposals, because the alternative is professional obscurity.

It is insanity.

  1. This phenomenon is also known as stockholm syndrome. ↩

Distress Signals

a black and white double exposure photo of the US flag

It is a peculiar time to be a black American. Maybe there has always been tension in this relationship; maybe in the past I’ve been more willing to live within that tension, to use it to test my own limits of what I can endure. Those limits were pulverized into powder this week.

America is in distress. I am in distress. And I’m feeling like we are all beyond saving.

Scene From The Staff Elevator

I work in a scent-light workplace, so I try to be conscious of wearing heavily perfumed grooming products. This morning it couldn’t be helped because I was out of my usual hair gunk and had to use Oyin Handmade Burnt Sugar Pomade on my hair.

A guy who works in IT got on the elevator and remarked “It smells like maple fudge in here.” I pointed to my head and sheepishly apologized. “No, it smells good. Can I lick your head?”

I’m sure it sounded way different in his head. 😆