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Author: paperbackdragon

Intersectional Gender Equity in Tech: My vGHC 2020 Experience

Intersectional Gender Equity in Tech: My vGHC 2020 Experience

paperbackdragon

This year, the Grace Hopper Celebration was virtual. Apart from interactive workshops, all sessions were pre-recorded and available to watch for many days after airing. There were keynotes with great advocates for women such as the soccer player Megan Rapinoe and great women in tech such as Lisa Su of AMD, networking sessions where they used Zoom to put you in random virtual breakout rooms for 10 minutes at a time–a feature that I think would be cool to have in Teams if it doesn’t exist already–and if you woke up early enough, yoga or a meditation in the morning …

Difficulties of Being a Woman in Tech

paperbackdragon

I’ve been lucky enough to have Microsoft pay for me to go to the virtual Grace Hopper Celebration this week. It’s been largely inspiring and rejuvenating, but at times has been tiring and frustrating.

I got into a funk today after an encounter that was sort of like a microcosm of the tech industry. I was in a networking session for the LGBT+ community, hosted on Zoom, where the session organizers put everyone into random virtual breakout rooms for 10 minutes or so at a time to get to know people more personally. It was sponsored by Discover, so they …

Writing Prompt: The Moving Mountains

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Link to original post on /r/WritingPrompts

“Hey, you should get up.” Melody kneeled beside her daughter, touching a hand to her arm and tugging gently. When no response came from the child, she tugged a little harder. “Lizzie, it’s time.”

Lizzie let out a quiet groan, then opened her eyes. She sat up immediately. “Oh no! I fell asleep!”

“It’s all right,” Melody chuckled. “You didn’t miss much. Mostly clouds. But we’re nearing the Moving Mountains and I knew you didn’t want to miss them.”

Standing up carefully, Lizzie looked over the edge of the basket of the hot air …

Writing Prompt: Figures of Speech

paperbackdragon

Prompt: You’re on a space ship with a bunch of your crewmates. You’re the only human, and apparently metaphors are a strictly human behavior. You’ve learned to cope with this, but today you’ve decided to speak in only figures of speech as a prank on the others.

Link to original post on /r/WritingPrompts

“How’s it hanging, Moe?”

The 7-foot tall, thin dark-skinned man from Klorn stepped out of his quarters and looked over at me. “Hello Sarah. How’s what hanging?”

I laughed and continued down the corridor, coffee mug in hand. This was going to be fun.

“Did you make …

Pride Month Sharing

paperbackdragon

This month I agreed to share about my own journey in the LGBT community I’m a part of at work, and thought it’d be worth sharing the same post more widely. ❤️

My name is Heather and my pronouns are she/her. I’m bisexual, having come out “fully” only a couple of years ago. When I was about 7 years old, soon after my parents divorced, my father came out as trans, and bi, and transitioned to being a woman: Paige. I’ve always been close with her, so the LGBT community has been close to my heart for nearly my whole …

Recovering a Sense of Strength

paperbackdragon

I just started reading Tehanu by Ursula Le Guin, the 4th book in her Earthsea series. Her writing style is so beautiful to me. It fills me with a sense of longing and urgency: I want to be able to do that. I feel the same way about Tolkien’s works, or whenever I watch the Lord of the Rings movies.

It inspired me to dig out The Artist’s Way again, and continue working through it to see if I can unblock my creativity. Synchronistically, I left off on week 8 which is about “Recovering a Sense of Strength” and it …

Pepparkakor Cookies

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I used to make Swedish pepparkakor cookies with my mom for Christmas. Americans would call them gingersnaps. We’d always use my grandmother’s friend’s recipe, a very simple list of ingredients and a sentence or two on a yellowing notecard written in my grandmother’s handwriting. I never met my grandmother on my mom’s side, since she died a year before I was born. My grandfather eventually married another wonderful woman, and as I grew up, I considered her my grandma.

When my grandparents still lived in Seattle, we’d sometimes bake the pepparkakor cookies at their condo. It was in an older …

Morning Pages

paperbackdragon

I have a lot of mixed feelings about writing. At times I get a lot of meaning and happiness from it, and at other times I feel like an untalented failure of a writer and avoid writing altogether. The latter has been winning out for the past few years, depression being one of a few factors. We talked about this in my therapy session today and given all the tools I’ve learned to deal with feelings of failure, I think I’m ready to try writing again.

The Artist’s Way came up, a book by Julia Cameron. The idea of trying …

Experiences with Anxiety and Depression

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For me, learning to handle my depression has been like fighting my base instincts. The difficult thing is, I can’t fight it, fighting it doesn’t help, I have to accept it and move through it, not around it. My analytical mind, which I pride myself on at work, works against me when it comes to emotions. Trying to figure out why I’m so anxious, or so down, leads me to trying to “fix” it, which often results in no helpful outcome, and instead sends me into a self-critical downward spiral. My biggest lesson at my therapist recently was learning to …

Reflections on Grief

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This month marks one year since my mom Maria died, and I feel like sharing.

It’s been one of the hardest years of my life, to be honest. It hasn’t been without its ups, of course (I’m engaged and making wedding plans!), but I’ve had more downs than I care to think about. Ups don’t counteract downs. They just kind of… coexist.

My grief is triggered by seemingly random things sometimes and it can be intense when it happens.

One example: last year at Sasquatch in late May, I was watching Florence & The Machine on the main stage. She …