Weeknotes #24 — A pause.
It’s been a couple of months since my last weeknotes and I’m (kinda) back for a few reasons:
- Sam Villis wrote about Weeknote Styles where I realised I’ve missed reading and sometimes writing them.
- Emeric Francis started writing weeknotes and, yes, people do care what you think.
- And other weeknotes including this from Jill Sexton,
‘What’s happening now isn’t new. But if we want a different result, if we want a truly seismic shift in our culture and our world and in our history, we need to ask what is different this time?’
And from Scribe, ‘There’s a switching point, where I realise I’m saying: “This is what’s going to happen. I’ve decided.”
I decided to pause writing weeknotes as they felt too….self-indulgent? Like I was spending time just looking inward and into my own echo chamber — also just thinking and not doing (is that really so bad though?).
Admittedly, some of the pause was caused by having a cracking time in New York — which is relevant to what follows.
We walked miles around the city and got a tad confused by the subway sometimes. Some of the areas I liked most are those which have massively changed in recent-ish years — Brooklyn and Williamsburg. (I won’t pretend to know enough yet about their history, recent past or the current).
We visited Brooklyn Museum and I’d love to be able to go back to see two of the exhibitions again — Soul of a Nation and Half the Picture. Take note of the sign outside.
I saw this:
and lots of artwork from Emory Douglas,
and The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago
and posters from the Guerrilla Girls.
There probably wasn’t a single emotion unfelt — happiness, fear, anger, joy, disgust and sadness. The common theme throughout the two exhibitions was that there are so many histories and current experiences which are ignored, discounted and not responded to. Yup, this isn’t news but seeing it set out so clearly in another city made it more real to me — a white, (seemingly a bit) middle-class, English woman.
What’s the relevance to #wotnoweeknotes?
Weeknotes to me is reflecting and thinking out-loud on my last 7–14 days. Through them I’ve virtually met new people (hello and thank you!) and have often been led down interesting and useful rabbit holes.
At the moment though, rather than creating my own words, I’m spending more time reading those of others:
- Your silence will not protect you— Audre Lorde
- Can we all be feminists? Edited by June Eric-Udore
- Inferior — Angela Saini
- Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (History of Computing) — Marie Hicks
And I’ve just caught up reading lots of weeknotes — always a pleasure.
I’ll be back. It’ll probably be adhoc weeknotes or, more likely, when I’ve theme or an event or a ‘something else’ to write about.
My first post on Medium was about being quiet and, the more I read about the experiences of others, the less I probably should be.
And finally….
