Kelly J. Baker
(She/Her)
apex predator of writing. author: Gospel According to the Klan, The Zombies Are Coming, Final Girl, etc. elder millennial. future ghost. #WritingKitties she/her
Articles by Kelly J. Baker
Thriving with purpose: Navigating a changing workforce
In recent years, a dramatic transformation has occurred in the workplace. As businesses evolve and organizations transform, the workforce of today must be willing to navigate and embrace change. Because we know that change is one of the few true constants. Transforming for the future That same expectation to navigate and embrace change is true at Thrivent.
The bees are angry.
Several weeks ago, I almost had a panic attack filling out an online form. Granted, the form was for something important, and I didn’t want to mess it up. But, it wasn’t a life or death situation. Yet, my body decided it was. My breathing was ragged. My heart pounded rapidly in my chest. My eyes filled up with tears. I dragged my hands through hair, and my already disheveled pixie cut was even more so.
It is what it is
I'm not working on my book again. It feels like a constant refrain these days. I'm not working on my book, I'm not working on my book, I'm not working on my book. It’s one I can’t escape—even though I keep trying. And it is a constant refrain. And it also isn’t. I keep starting working and stopping. Stopping and starting. Over and over and over again. And endless, painfully unavoidable cycle. It’s the not working on the book that I focus on—obsess about really.
Sitting with Uncomfortable Feelings
So, a Thing happened. No, I’m not going to tell you what said Thing was. Yes, I know that is annoying. No, I don’t want to talk the specifics of the Thing just yet. (Yes, it is about writing). Instead, I want to talk about how the Thing made me feel. So, this is an essay about feelings—the Thing is less important than how it caught me up in my feelings and didn’t want to let me go. This is an essay about feelings. The Thing happened out of the blue.
Parenting in these times
[alt-text: a blurry view of a summer field at dusk] CW: School shooting, loss and grief I had this idea last week that I was going to write an essay about my “good shit” list. That list of all the good shit that keeps me going from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year. That running list that I keep in my head for when things go wrong—for when all the bad shit happens.
Confidence
[alt-text: cracks in the pavement with rainbow-colored oil stain] I’m trying to not have a panic attack for the third day in a row this week. I woke up again worried about all the work I have to do—a book, a podcast, an imprint, a panel, a talk, etc.—and the small amount of time that I have to do it in. Work happens between 8:00 am and 2:10 pm every weekday. It’s the time between when the kids are off to school and when I head to the school to pick them up and sit in the car rider line.
The Depression Checklist
[alt-text: hallway with light coming in from windows and shadows near a doorway] CW: honest, hard-to-read descriptions of depression For years, I have contemplated creating a depression checklist, a list that I could use to determine if I am depressed or not. A list of all the things that show I am in yet another depressive episode. The list could include small things or bigger things, which would signal I was depressed. Again. I have a hard time telling that I am when I in the midst of an episode.
Getting Back in the Writing Habit
[alt-text: up-close image of keyboard in black and white] This week, I sent a book proposal off to a press, a new press I haven’t worked with before, and a book on a big topic, like swinging-for-the-fences big. Unsurprisingly, I have big feelings about the proposal. Good ones. Not-so-good ones. Writing the proposal is part of me jumping back into writing and getting back into the writing habit. The proposal proved to be both not hard and hard to write. I know what the book is about.
The (Not So) Writing Life
[alt text: up close view of type writer] I quit my job as an editor of two newsletters, magazines really, at the end of January. I probably should have quit sooner, but I lingered—stuck between what I knew I should do and what I wasn’t sure I could do. I wanted to quit, but I didn’t. Until I did. It was both a sudden bout of clarity that I had outgrown the job and a slow painful awareness that I was too burnt out to care enough to do it any more. It was time to move on.
Anxiety Minutes
[alt-text: partial, up close view of a clock] My smart watch buzzes my wrist again. It wants me to know that I am only a few minutes away from reaching my active minutes for the week. Those 150 minutes of exercise that it expects me to get in every week. Thirty minutes a day, five days a week. The watch tracks my exercise by monitoring whether my heart rate is accelerated or not to tell if I am active. I look down at my watch and grimace. My heart rate is up, but it isn’t because I’ve been exercising.
And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness
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"No Shame in the Medicine Game"
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Pete Davidson bit on SNL (start at 2:28) that’s been making the rounds. Davidson talks about Kanye West and his own mental disorder.* There’s a line in there that I can’t get out of my head. He says, “No shame in the medicine game.”** Davidson, as y’all may know, has been pretty open about his struggles with anxiety and depression as well as his diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. I, too, have struggled with with anxiety and depression.
Academic Waste - Kelly J Baker
For years, I’ve been writing about how academia works—and particularly about contingent labor, gender, and the adjunctification of the modern university. I’ve advocated for the impermanent members of the faculty because my own work in academia was only ever off the tenure track. When I began reading Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works, I was convinced that I knew the map of faculty labor in higher education. I assumed his book would complement and shore up what I knew.
Taking a Leap
This is my last column as editor of this newsletter. This might come as a surprise or not. After all, I have written about the temptation to quit my job previously. From the very beginning of the pandemic, I wanted to quit. Being a parent, teacher and worker simultaneously was hard. My children were stuck at home first because of the lockdown and later because they both attend virtual school. My partner and I are privileged. We are able to work from home and keep our children in virtual school.
New Podcast Interviews!
Some of you might have been wondering what I’ve been up to lately. Mostly, it’s being a “learning coach” for a 2nd grader and a 7th grader attending virtual school. And editing, trying to make it through another pandemic year, grumbling about my foot and walking boot, herding cats, and spending an inordinate amount of time on Twitter. So, you know, the usual.
“If You Never Bleed, You're Never Gonna Grow.”
Two things happened to me in 2021, which feel more important than all of the rest. I turned 41 and lost my dad within the span of a month. During the endless pandemic, both happened so close together that they felt inextricably bound. In mid-August, I had a birthday dinner with my parents, kids and partner in my dad's bedroom where he lay in a hospice bed. I don't remember much—just sitting nearby, eating together and chattering inanely. It was a celebration that felt anything but.
What You'll Lose - Kelly J Baker
It’s that time after a visitation, in which everyone starts to leave, or maybe, to flee. They’ve seen the open casket. They’ve looked down upon the deceased; the funeral home has attempted to make the dead look as they did in life. (It hardly ever works.) Folks attending the visitation quietly but quickly move away from the casket and the rows of purple upholstered chairs in the purple room. The room is probably supposed to be soothing, but it isn’t.
Teaching As Liberation
Yesterday, I learned that bell hooks passed away. And I, like so many others, was gutted by her loss. I didn’t know except through her writing. I never got to hear her speak. I only encountered her on the page. When I first picked up one of her books, I didn’t realize the impact that she would have on me. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. hooks demanded reckoning with our world, and she transformed me and other readers too. There was the thinker that I was pre-hooks and the thinker I was after.
No Space to Grieve
My dad died two months ago after a four-year battle with stage 4 brain and lung cancer. We knew it was coming. That didn’t make it any easier. Love and Loss His decline became more and more rapid as this past year wore on. With each visit, we lost a little more of him—memories disappeared bit by bit. We told him the stories of our lives together when he couldn’t remember. Eventually, he forgot my name. It was a sharp wound, somewhat dulled by its recurrence though it never stopped hurting.
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Educating during Catastrophes
There are two news stories that I can't get out of my head. They've haunted me ever since I first read them. One is about the pandemic. The other is about the climate crisis. Both involve young people and what they face in the present and in the future. An Orphaned Generation The first article ran in The Boston Globe, and it is about the children orphaned by the pandemic. The numbers are staggering. Globally, around 1.5 million children lost parents or caregivers.
Parents Aren’t Alright, Still
It was the oatmeal that did me in. My gluten-free oatmeal that I shove in the microwave a couple of mornings a week. As I prepared my breakfast, I talked to a seventh grader about her schedule for the upcoming day, offering reminders about what had to be done, and tried to convince a second grader for the 100th time that yes, he had to wear a shirt to virtual school. Live lessons don’t require shoes, but a shirt was not optional. The Straw When I checked the oatmeal, it was soup.
All Over Again
It's another week. Another Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. It doesn't matter what day it is. It's another day preceded by another night in which I woke up at 3:00 am, sweaty with a racing heart from a nightmare I can't quite remember. I stare at the ceiling, preparing to face another day, eerily similar to the one before. The Same Morning When I finally convince myself to get out of bed, I struggle down the hallway to get to the garage where I pull a Coke Zero out of the drink fridge.
Can We Be Heard?
In the span of a week, Bill Cosby was released from prison and a judge denied Britney Spears' request to end her conservatorship. Two seemingly unrelated events that happened in an ordinary week, but their impact was anything but ordinary. An Overturned Prison Sentence Sixty women have accused Cosby, the once beloved comedian and actor, of sexual assault. After decades of allegations, he was finally convicted in 2018 and sentenced to three to 10 years in a state prison.
Not Falling Behind but Standing Still
A few years ago, I was on a walk around the neighborhood with my partner. As I huffed up yet another hill, I turned to him and asked, “Do you think I'm productive enough?” He looked at me for several seconds and finally said, “Enough? You have a PhD, and you've written essays and books. You're an editor. You're productive.” “But am I productive enough?” I asked again. “What is enough?” he replied. “I don't know,” I answered, even as I knew that whatever enough was I hadn't reached it.
Not “Too Emotional”
Recently, I re-watched Captain Marvel (2019) with my family. We're sort of Marvel nerds, and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) is one of our favorite superheroes. How could she not be? She's determined, smart, fierce and funny. She wants to do what is right, even if it means breaking the rules. She's the kind of role model that I needed as a kid and one that I'm glad that my kids have now. To be honest, I was also glad to watch a superhero movie that wasn't centered on a man. Don't get me wrong.
What We've Lost
Since the beginning of the pandemic lockdown last March until now, I've lost things. My car keys weren't on their designated hooks, and I spent hours looking for them only to realize that I had somehow thrown them away. Both of my umbrellas vanished. I've misplaced important documents and also paper assignments for both my first grader and sixth grader that remain missing, even after I've tossed my office. Before the pandemic, I would lose my coffee cup at least once a day.
Making Mistakes
I made a mistake. Actually, I made two mistakes in the span of two weeks. These weren't the tiny everyday mistakes that happen with or without our notice. Instead, they were ones that I made in my work. One was a minor mistake, and it was easy to handle with a couple of emails. It was a blip in my day—there and gone. The other mistake was another small one, but it could have led to a larger issue. It was more complicated than the first. It impacted more people. It required little more effort to resolve.
Anxiety in an Anxious Age
A few months ago, I had a video call with a physician's assistant. I had called a bit frantically days before. I couldn't fall asleep at all or I was awake at 2 a.m. and unable to go back to sleep or I woke up from nightmares with my heart trying to beat its way outside of my chest. I was also having more panic attacks. My anxiety was out of control. Managing Disorder Having anxiety is not new for me.
My Anger Remains
I'm angry. Again. I'm trying to answer the emails that overflow my inbox and convince a first grader to please for the love of all that is good and holy to finish a grammar worksheet. I'm also making sure a sixth grader is actually writing a short story for her Language Arts class rather than surfing the internet for cat memes. I'm also on day five or six or seven, I don't know really, of headaches, stuffy noses and fatigue.
The Costs of Speaking Out
In the late afternoon on Jan. 6, an email landed in my inbox. I didn't notice it at first. My eyes had been glued to Twitter and various news sites as I watched a white nationalist insurrection happen in real time. Trump supporters—some were carrying guns or Confederate flags and others were dressed in tactical gear—busted their way into the Capitol. There was a lockdown and then evacuations. My horror grew minute by minute as I refreshed news sites to see the newest update or latest photo.
Not Quite Half‐Full
I used to be a “glass half‐full” kind of person. I used to be optimistic. Optimism has never been my natural state of being. I'm not convinced that what comes next is better than what came before. Instead, I cultivated a habit of optimism, not one of certainty but of caution. I want people and the world to be better than they are. Just because things were bad didn't mean that they had to stay that way. Tomorrow could be better than today.
Working Mothers Still Aren't Okay
It's November, the day after the election and after my new book was published. I'm once again sitting at my dining room table or, as I like to call it, “school.” My first grader is watching yet another video on word sounds before he completes yet another worksheet. My sixth grader is taking a pretest in science with her brows furrowed in concentration. Weeks ago, we had to pull her from the county's virtual school and move her to online homeschool.
Wrenches at Your Insides
Writing memoirs helps us understand both horror and hope in our own lives. Years ago, I found myself binge-watching Scream Queens (2015–2016), a comedy that satirized all of those slasher films I mainlined in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It brought back to a time when horror was something I couldn’t get enough of. For much of my young life, I was a horror buff. I watched Michael Meyers and Freddie Krueger. I watched random serial killers target mostly white women.
Hitting the Wall
I've hit the wall again. During the months and months of COVID‐19 pandemic, I've lost count of how many times. Life is manageable until it isn't. Endless Crisis Particular hits, or maybe crashes is more accurate, stand out. There was the breakdown over finishing my book on apocalypses during what feels like an apocalypse. There were all the instances in this months‐long isolation when I was sure that I couldn't do this anymore. This, of course, stood for anything and everything.
Anger Within
There's a photo of a redwood tree that made the rounds on social media. It's by Randy Vazquez. The tree is in Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California's oldest state park, which was ravaged by the recent CZU Lightning Complex fires. The park was damaged, but the majority of the redwoods in the park survived. This tree is one of the lucky survivors. The photo is a close‐up of the giant tree's trunk. That's not what captures my attention.
Those Who Wander Are Sometimes Lost
There are a lot of things I keenly miss from before the pandemic: the ability to be near people rather than separated by at least six feet; the ability to go to funerals, memorials, birthday parties and other social gatherings; and the quiet moments when my family is not stuck in my house with me. I miss leaving my house for errands without panic. Wandering One of the things I miss profoundly sort of surprised me: the ability to wander.
The Pandemic's Motherhood Penalty
It's May, and I'm sitting at my dining room table. It's covered in pencils, crayons, scissors, worksheets and overstuffed binders. The table is now our school; it's no longer for eating. We're two months into remote schooling, crisis schooling really, and it's not getting any easier. My children's work piles up, and mine does too. The pile never seems to get smaller. The Struggle Continues My book is already two weeks overdue to my editor.
Hope Is Not Enough
I'm doomscrolling again—relentlessly perusing social media and dwelling in the terribleness of our world. Police Brutality and Protests Once again, the awfulness of the world caught my attention and didn't let go. In May, Amy Cooper, a white woman, called the police on a Black man bird‐watching in Central Park for simply asking her to leash her dog. On video, she lied that he threatened her. He wasn't harmed, but he could have been.
We All Have to Push the Van
Lately, I'm thinking about one of my favorite movies, Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Amid this pandemic, I'm reminded of a particular scene, one that has stuck with me since I first watched it as a grad student. I'll get to the scene later, but first let me tell you about the film. Not All Sunshine Little Miss Sunshine centers on one quirky—and dysfunctional—family, the Hoovers. Sheryl is the overloaded working mom, trying to keep everything stable even though nothing is.
Schooling Amid a Pandemic
I was sitting on my front porch and drinking my second (at least) cup of coffee. The morning was cool so far, but it wouldn't last. Spring feels like summer in Florida, with the unrelenting sun but beautiful blue skies. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something move in the dirt maybe a foot from the porch. I leaned forward to look closer and noticed a small turtle.
Panic‐gogy: A Conversation With Sean Michael Morris
Our editor interviewed Sean Michael Morris, senior instructor in the Learning, Design, and Technology (LDT) program at the University of Colorado Denver's School of Education and Human Development, about the COVID‐19 pandemic's impact on higher ed. This interview is edited and abbreviated. I wanted to interview you after I read an NPR piece on the concept of “panic‐gogy” in which you were interviewed. It was a perfect term.
Fads, Facts and Judgment
Our relationship with food is perhaps the most important relationship in our lives, because our health and our lives depend on us having a healthy relationship with food. We choose to make food either our medicine or our poison. Since we’re all individuals with individual health concerns and possible issues, we have to determine for ourselves what works for us — individually. Many of us choose to lead a healthy lifestyle, yet judge others because they don’t make the same choices.
The Juggle Is Unreal
I've spent the last few months scrolling and clicking. Scrolling through news sites to see the latest information on the COVID‐19 pandemic. Scrolling endlessly through social media to learn how to wash my hands properly and to make my own face mask out of a bandana and hair bands. Clicking through graphs to see the growing number of cases globally.
It's the End and Nothing Feels Fine
I can’t remember what day it is. Is it Thursday or Friday? I think it’s Friday, almost three weeks ago. I still can’t be sure. The days are increasingly indecipherable as we shelter-in-place. An hour lasts a day or speeds by in a second. Everything blurs into monotonous similarity. Even though I can never seem to remember what day it is any more, my kids, six and 11, are able to. Maybe it’s because their brains are less cluttered than mine.
The Juggle is Real
I'm in a seminar room with graduate students from my alma mater. We're talking about sexism and teaching. I brought in candy to soften the blow. One student raises a hand to ask me a question about juggling their commitments. In this department, the very one I graduated from, students have a lot to juggle: taking seminars, teaching their own classes, researching/writing their theses or dissertations and living their lives. What kind of strategies could I offer about juggling all of their obligations?
Risk factors for child food contamination in low‐income neighbourhoods of Maputo, Mozambique: An exploratory, cross‐sectional study
ORIGINAL ARTICLE Sarah Bick Corresponding Author E-mail address: sarah.bick@lshtm.ac.uk https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6870-5320 Department of Disease Control, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK Correspondence Sarah Bick, Department of Disease Control, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, UK.
The Past Doesn't Have to Be the Present
In January, I visited the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC. One of the things not a lot of people know about me is that, for a little while, I wanted to be an art historian.
Begin Again
There's a guitar sitting in the corner of my office. It's been sitting there for months now, actually more than six, but who's keeping count? My father‐in‐law loaned it to me so, finally, I might learn to play. For years and years, I've wanted to play guitar, but I've never taken the time to learn. I always had an excuse. I didn't want to pay for an instrument I wouldn't use. I shouldn't be doing something fun when there's so much to do. The excuses piled up.
On Self‐Care and Risks
It's November 2016, the day after Thanksgiving. I'm at an amusement park with my family, and my kids and their cousins are all grins and laughter as they sprint from one ride to another. It's also the day my op‐ed on white supremacy runs in a national newspaper. I'm not thinking about the article at all as I enjoy the day. A notification pops up on my phone. A friend asks if I'm OK because of all the threats I'm receiving on Twitter. His message catches me unaware. What?
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