yes i did just watch Alyson's parts in the Missy Elliott video 100 times. they were sooooo baby!!

if i got sent to one of those imaginings of hell where you're sentenced to reliving your worst nightmare for eternity, there's a high chance mine would involve being married to a guy with decades of experience in corporate gaslighting and HR language

I don't quite know how to phrase this, but there's something about the writing itself that isn't totally working for me. It's at a sentence-structure level, I just don't have enough knowledge on that to express exactly what. Closest I can get is to say the rhythm is off? It feels both choppy and repetitive.

I'm also trying really hard not to directly compare this memoir to Jennette McCurdy's, but the content (so far) feels similar. A loooot of childhood self esteem being dependent on parental approval which is tied to professional success. So far here I'm not sure if her mom is exerting extra pressure on her or not, it seems from her words and actions that maybe she isn't, and rather it's Alyson projecting that expectation due to being a child and wanting to please their mom (for example, thinking of when Alyson decided their mom was just making up a "story" to "play along" with that winning isn't important). It does make me think a lot about how it must be hard to find that balance of being encouraging of a child's talent while not going too far that it becomes damaging to them somehow.

I searched for this topic in several different ways and couldn't find an answer. When I imported my books, I have a book that is now showing in my library twice. I figured out how to remove it from my Yearly Challenge list (little pencil icon at the top left to edit) so it isn't skewing my numbers, but I can't figure out how to remove the duplicate from my library. I'm probably just missing something super obvious 😅 but I'm not sure what.