#5SmartReads - January 2, 2023

Madison on the Wakanda Forever family, non-linear work days, and the joy of aging

January 02, 2023

Madison works as a full-time freelance writer across numerous verticals. She's embracing hot chocolate season and filling every spare minute preparing to launch Grief Cards, a line of sympathy cards that don't suck.

Public conversations around grief have always been much-needed and all-too-rare.

The Black Panther team has been incredibly vulnerable throughout their collective grieving process, something I’m very grateful for. This particular piece zooms in on their personal experiences while making Wakanda Forever.

To quote Angela Bassett,

“We’ve been managing it or dealing with it or growing from it or moving onward from the moment that we heard Chadwick had passed. It’s been two years of going through whatever cycles of grief that human beings go through.”

While celebrating the (unacceptably overdue) codification of same-sex and interracial marriage in the United States, I returned to Ryan Pfluger’s book Holding Space: Life and Love Through a Queer Lens.

Pfluger’s collaborative photography collection explicitly focuses on LGBTQ+ love and intimacy around the U.S. Both his portraits and the values behind the work demand your attention and demand the creation of a better world.

Not to toot my own horn, but over my first year of full-time freelance writing, my body has elected to follow a non-linear workday all on its own. How can I be sure? Well. Once 2:00pm hits, I start dozing off at my computer, whether I’m working from home, my coworking space, Panera, or any of the other numerous locations where my remote, asynchronous work happens.

To be clear: this happens no matter how well-rested I am or how many cold brews I’ve ingested. Little did I know, research shows that the flexibility of a non-linear work schedule leads to lower rates of burnout and higher rates of long-term professional happiness and creativity. I’ll take it!

I can’t wait to have wrinkles.

I’ve said this loudly and often for years, but I don’t think most folks really believed me. Finally, as my twenties came to a close, I noticed some light lines remaining after my facial expression ended. How cool is that! I’ve smiled so many times that my skin remembers!

I’ll admit, a large part of this perspective comes from the fact that I’ve lost many loved ones at incredibly young ages, so growing older is something I do not take lightly. If we’re lucky, we get to age, and I think there’s a unique joy to that.

If you’re reading this, I hope that you’ve never lost a single loved one - and I hope you’re open to the idea that getting older, too, is worthy of celebration.

The school district that raised me is far from perfect. KCUR is a local publication with impressively researched stories - including this exploration of what the Blue Springs School District is doing to (purposely or otherwise) discourage young people experiencing homelessness from attending their schools. As a former educator and a graduate of BSSD, I agree with KCUR’s experts that by “requiring new families to enroll at the offices of the school district’s police force,” the district is keeping already marginalized and underserved communities from pursuing an education and receiving the support that should be guaranteed by the McKinney-Vento Act. Changing this standard operating procedure would be a great first step to better serving all students.

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