5SR - January 23, 2024

Hitha on inputs, a thriller centered on influencers, and the power of fandom

Author

Hitha Palepu
January 23, 2024

Today’s curator is the founder of #5SmartReads, Hitha Palepu. She’s a consummate multihyphenate - CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals, author of WE’RE SPEAKING: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris and How to Pack: Travel Smart for Any Trip, and professional speaker. Hitha is an unabashed fan of Taco Bell, Philadelphia sports teams & F1, romance novels, and is a mediocre crafter. She lives in NYC with her husband and two sons.

I sincerely hope this deal comes to fruition - and more importantly, that it leads to a durable, sustainable peace in Israel and Palestine and for everyone to live freely, safely, and with dignity.

I adore Madeleine Dore’s perspective on input and output years - and the notion of seasons or years having their own purpose and way of living and working.

“In my book, I liken this oscillation we find in ourselves to a sponge: there is the absorbing and the squeezing. Sometimes you need to do nothing except absorb inspiration, knowledge or find rest. This is an input phase.

But the thing is, if you sit and absorb too long, you can become oversaturated and succumb to inertia (i.e. soggy!) So, like a sponge, you also need the squeeze—the doing, the action, the outpouring of ideas.

I return to this analogy again and again because I think it can buoy us during quieter periods in our life—the input years—encouraging us to remember our need to refill. Likewise, during times of busyness—our output years—it may motivate us because we know rest will eventually follow.

In a society that expects us to be always working on a goal, knowing what’s next, and doing, we can overlook the value of the input phases. But what I try to remember is that you need to have absorbed something in the first instance in order to have something to squeeze.”

I’ve been beating myself up on the lack of perceived progress I’ve made in my content business, but this piece reminded me that it’s simply an input year - and to enjoy being in this space.

I’m a proud alumna of the University of Washington every day, but especially after reading this piece on how Washington state is taking the lead on getting abortion care to those who need it.

“Last spring, Downing and colleagues launched the Pharmacy Abortion Access Project to provide community pharmacists in Washington with training on screening for medication abortion eligibility, prescribing abortion pills, and dispensing them from their brick-and-mortar stores — a streamlined model of care that currently exists nowhere else in the United States.

"This is about meeting women where they are," says Downing, adding that close to 90% of Americans live within 5 miles of a community pharmacy and that patients visit their pharmacist almost twice as frequently as they visit their primary care physician. "We do believe this can serve as a model for other states."“

Things should be a lot different 51 years after Roe was codified. But I’m grateful for the FDA relaxing the restrictions on mifepristone based on decades of clinical data, and how pharmacists (the unsung heroes of our healthcare system) are acting with urgency and care to get people the abortion care they need.

I cannot wait for Olivia’s forthcoming book Such a Bad Influence. And after you read this excerpt, you’ll be aching for it (and I hope you preorder it as well).

There’s something really special about seeing your friends - especially ones that are fellow readers - create the books that I’d be adding to my TBR anyway. I like a very specific kind of thriller - centered on very rich people or influencers, not too scary. And I can’t wait to read Muenter’s book this summer.

I’ve been having the “can you believe this election is a repeat of 2020?” conversation with a lot of folks, and this piece helped make sense of that disbelief - especially on the Republicans’ side.

“The public figure’s persona is a collectively created construct. It’s built by the celebrity and what they present to the media and the public, and then built by the media and the public and how they interpret and interact with the famous person. Once fans have created a personal parasocial relationship with their celebrity of choice, they will project whatever positive attributes they want onto that celebrity’s persona — even if they don’t align with reality and even if they’re internally contradictory.”

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