January 17, 2022

Hello and Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

How is everyone doing? I'm coming to terms with the fact that we've just entered the part of the calendar with very few holiday PTO breaks and am finding little things to plan and look forward to. Somewhere in the rabbit hole of my searching, I was reminded that tonight is the first full moon of the year, also known as the Wolf Moon and is associated with self confidence. Finding little things to plan and do and the attribute of being confident both tie into February's book of the month The Long Game. Alexandra will be hosting the meeting on February 8th.

The Weekly Three

1. Something about The Long Game: If you're not totally sold on your need for a book like this or what it's relevance to your professional life might be, I highly recommend taking a look at this this self-assessment.

2. Something about making friends as an adult: Many times during our meetings, we've discussed how hard it is to make friends once you're out of school. When my best friend moved to Bend, Oregon she used Bumble in BFF mode to find women she could potentially become adventure buddies with. Bumble, of course, became a huge success for its dating mode. This Atlantic article compares finding new friends as an adult to dating and gives some interesting statistics about it, including the estimate "that it typically takes more than 200 hours, ideally over six weeks, for a stranger to grow into a close friend".

Millennium Images / Gallery Stock via The Atlantic

3. Something about decolonizing your bookshelf: NPR article by Juan Vidal about the voices that shape your view of the world.

"Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat? While the details and depth of experience may differ, white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons. That means non-white readers have had to process stories and historical events through a white author's lens. The problem goes deeper than that, anyway, considering that even now 76% of publishing professionals — the people you might call the gatekeepers — are white."

Thank you as always for taking the time to read,

Amber