I’ve got all these things floating around in my head.

Anne Mueller’s piece about pain. This Ask Metafilter for it’s discussion about the line between pushing our children too hard and not hard enough (is that a thing?) and how when we put our children first, we become a not even close second.

This won’t be the last time you’re faced with options that are good for your kid and bad for you;

And how I do get pretty decent sleep and exercise regularly and eat ok(ish) and that these things are keep me sane despite feeling overwhelmed constantly. Sabrina Benhaim’s Poem - Explaining My Depression To My Mother.

“Mom, I am the party, only I am a party I don’t want to be at” is boucing around my head.

That I heard sampled on Fred Again..’s New Year Mix on Apple Music. Which I did because there’s only so much I can listen to his Boiler Room mix before it becomes a problem. But seriously, I do love his Actual Life albums. This Oatmel comic on compliments.

He used to find it hard to take a compliment. It was easier once he thought of them as borrowed, instead. Tucked away for the next person who needed one.

Steve Makofsky’s Makoism newsletter too, for being one of the few things or places on the Internet I actually read instead of letting my screen-adled brain skim over. See also Kottke. I keep meaning to donate something but I’m too busy spending my money on things that aren’t important to me. He posted a link to this article Humans Need Play and that’s in my head too recently.

Under stress, we focus on what we need to do: submit the project, feed the kid. Perhaps we find time for what we should do: answer the email, clean the counters. But under pressure, we tend to drop the things that feel… optional. Frivolous perhaps. In particular, play.

And how the regular-ish games of table tennis I play with a colleague is probably also keeping me saner than I realise.

The opposite of play is not work – the opposite of play is depression. Dr Stuart Brown.