This is Exclamation Points
Issue #1: A newsletter about design, community, joy, access, inclusion and other radical imaginings.
👋 An intro is in order
I’m Cait and my pronouns are they and them. I’m a designer, a queer non-binary person, a disabled person, a jazz fan, a huge nerd, a believer in people power and strong communities, a lover of joy and of rest, an appreciator of radical imaginings, and a human being who loves helping people find the time, energy and resources to live their lives in ways that feel good à la mutual aid.
The thoughts I often want to posit – and the thoughts I see myself writing about in this newsletter – are where my life as a designer in tech meets my life as someone interested in things like community, mutual aid, joy, and various radical frameworks.
❣️ What’s in a name
Not so long ago, I would painstakingly comb my emails and try to decipher how many exclamation points I needed to omit in order to be taken seriously. This exhausting-exclamation-point-internal-debate is one that, as it turns out, is experienced by many. Particularly, it banes those of us who fall within various marginalized identities, and therefore are more cognizant of our perceived professionalism in the world.
One day, I found myself in a conversation with some peers around why we feel the need to suppress our declarations of joy and excitement in the ways we communicate. We wondered that, perhaps, something as simple as including as many exclamation points as we damn well please in our emails and messages can begin to actively reject archetypes of a “professional” that are often stern, joyless and rooted in dated concepts of masculinity.
The name of this newsletter is both an outward declaration and a reminder to myself. A reminder to bring my whole self into how I want to write and hereinafter never stress over how many exclamation points I naturally want to use. I hope this interests and/or resonates with some of you, and that you choose to follow along and subscribe!
Tag along 🚕 ✯¸.•´*¨`*•✿
🎶 Volume #1
Each issue, I plan to drop three songs that are inspiring me, bringing me joy, or are simply stuck in my head. Here’s the issue #1 round-up:
Real Love by Mary J. Blige
This is the Day by The The
It’s a good day (to fight the system) by Shungudzo