Welcome to week 31 of Internet of Literal Things. The weird, wacky, wonderful, and wild of the world wide web seems to be several-too-many “w’s” and a perfect place for me to start. I’m Sara Nason, a fellow person on the internet, who happens to have many hours on hand to read random articles that are tucked into multiple crevices in my phone.
Or at least I feel wholly unprepared for being myself. I am prepared for the work week. I am prepared (ish, I hope?) for this newsletter. I am prepared for grief and trauma and happiness and success that ebb and flow just like life. But I am not prepared to be myself.
I feel like somewhere along the institutionalization of my education, there became a feeling within to hide the extra weird parts of my interests that didn’t go 100% along with the other weird passions of mine (see my high school education for more information about how my senior superlative was most likely to show up for educational events).
This week, among a lot of feelings and emotions and labor, I signed up for guitar lessons after maybe five or six years of ignoring the instrument. The guitar teacher asked me upon meeting me to “play my limit,” and I told him I couldn’t and wasn’t comfortable with that, because I don’t know my limit and that makes me anxious. In some way, it seems like he understood. But then there’s the anxiety of “what if he doesn’t understand, and I’m just saying untranslatable nonsense.”
Subconsciously, I know what I want to do. Where I want to go. How I want to make that happen. But, consciously, there are 30 different neon light signs saying “WARNING!!!” and “STAY ON YOUR CURRENT PATH, ITS SO SAFE!!!!” I’m attempting to give myself the grace of failure and the opportunity to try without looking up or down, only forward. Damn does imposter syndrome have something to say about it.
So, strangers of the internet, here we go. i’m not prepared for the Internet of Literal Things #31.
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What I’m Reading
Coffee is hard (Still Drinking)
How four dishes with roots in other lands tell a story of immigration and transformation (Washington Post)
Why do Instagram playgrounds keep calling themselves museums? (CityLab)
How video games help people cope with disabilities (Washington Post)
The freelance life (Side Supply)
Why small businesses should start marketing on day one (MailChimp)
Fika: the Swedish coffee break (Trello)
Why the Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys aren’t ready for they/them pronouns (NY Times)
Online, no one knows you’re poor (The Guardian)
Indigenous Americans want to run their own healthcare after disproportionate deaths in hospitals (NY Times)
Bresha Meadows thought you’d understand (HuffPost)
When women don’t want to talk (The Cut)
The original BlackBerry was ahead of its time (OneZero)
How the bicycle changed the world for women (Jalopnik)
‘A way of learning from everything': the rise of the city critic (The Guardian)
What I’m Visually Experiencing
Music theory for musicians and normal people (Toby Rush)
Designing Women (Designing Women)
What I’m Listening To
Songs I want to learn to play on the guitar (Spotify)
🏆 A Photo of An #UglyDogs Related Thing On The Internet 🥇
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