I’m writing this with tears streaking down my face after a rough week. But somehow I’ve kept reading.
I knew preschool would be hard. It was always going to be a big change for our family, and I think for the most part, we’ve handled that well. Have I turned into a mad woman in the morning because I seem to be the only one who knows what’s going on? Oh absolutely. But I’ve been told that’s part of being a mom, so I’m not even worried about it.
What I am worried about is my daughter’s inability to make friends over the course of her first week. Do you know what’s the worst? Peeking in to watch your daughter run into her classroom, sit down with a group of girls to play and look crestfallen as each of those immediately got up to get away from her. I wanted to run into that classroom and scoop her back up to tell her that she’ll find her friends. But I stopped myself.
There are only nine kids in that classroom. What if her people are not in that class? That’s totally possible. And my daughter has these big emotions. She feels everything to the max, and although I’ve worked with her to navigate it, it’s not anything we can do much about at this age. What if it’s just really hard for kids who experience much smaller emotions to understand her and want to be around it? I don’t know. We’re at the beginning of this, and we’ll see how it develops as we go on.
Until then, let’s check out what I’m reading this week.
Reading Social Media News
Every once in awhile an article comes along where I’m just screaming, “YES!” This week, while I was reading this article about how community is the antidote to AI, I just wanted to send it to literally everyone. Community building and management is such a huge skill in a social media manager’s arsenal but it’s not appreciated nearly enough. Yet, it can be the difference between a fan buying and a person just moving onto the next piece of content. Invest in your social media managers who know how to community build. It’s going to be huge for you in the long run.
This week was just full of good, rich articles, so I really struggled with what to put in this second spot. I’m going with where AI gets its answers. Why? Because I think this is super interesting to content marketers and because I don’t think enough people are realizing how much of a powerhouse Reddit can be. TikTok and Meta are flashier, but Reddit can do a ton, including getting your answers onto AI.
Reading Books, Books and More Books
Past
I never really connected with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. It never felt weird. It never felt like a world I was dipping into. Instead, it felt very apart from me. Maybe that’s because much of it is told from the writings in a pastor’s journal. But it also included parts told by the “monster” in the story, and there were just issues… It didn’t feel like there were a lot of emotions. And I never felt like the author had a clear idea of the action or “horror” aspects in his head. So it would say things like an arm was ripped off without any descriptions of what that entailed. If you’re going for horror, go all the way. Or else you get this, which is pretty lukewarm at best. Score: C+
And then there was Audition by Katie Kitamura. I did not expect to inhale this book like I did. The incongruity of the two parts of the book locked me in. It seems odd to say that, but it kept me wondering what in the hell was going on with this little odd book I had picked up. And as everything slowly fell apart, it became clearer and clearer. It’s not a book for everyone, but I think women of a certain age might especially like it. I read it compulsively over the course of two days, which was kind of surprising to me. Score: A-
Present
It is once again book club time, which means it’s also time for me to see how fast I can read. Because I will never learn how to pace myself and because I have been reading like crazy lately. The first of the book club books is Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. One of our members suggested this one, and it’s a member I very much like. Three of our members are absolute dolls. One has just started coming. And then there are the other two.
I got into an actual verbal argument with one of them last month. She said something that was not in the book (not the first time) and that was offensive, so I called her on it. Her response was, “I’ve read the book twice so I know it better than you do.” I had read the book twice. And I seemed to be watching this argument from outside of my body as I said all these words that I strongly felt but never would have said under normal circumstance. Finally someone broke into the argument and I did my usual peacekeeping (“We’ll have to agree to disagree”), so the book club could go back to normal. What will happen this month? Will I totally lose it again? Does this person hate me now? We’ll see how this goes…
Oh and I’m still waiting to see if the library is sending me the other book, so I don’t have to buy it. It does not look likely, and I’m so bummed about this.
What are you reading? What books are you looking forward to?