Welcome!

I’m Julia Wise. I’m writing personally here, not on behalf of any organization.

I work on supporting the effective altruism community. A main thing I’m trying to do is figure out how effective altruism can be part of a well-rounded life. How do we have big, world-changing goals and also stay sane and healthy?

The other big project in my life is raising my three daughters, together with my husband Jeff. I nerd out about child health and development, so there’s a lot of that here.

I want it to be easy to find posts by topic rather than by newness, so I suggest trying the categories on the left menu. You’ll find some old posts from previous blogs here when I think they’re still particularly useful.

Some things I’m trying to do with this new blog:

• I want to break out of an old pattern of writing in a tidy way that makes for a good blog post but doesn’t quite get at the messiness of reality.
• I initially wrote Giving Gladly for an audience that was pretty new to effective altruism, but a lot of what I want to say about EA these days is more for people who have already been involved for a while. I might still sometimes update Giving Gladly with material that’s more useful to newcomers.
• Since I’m several years farther down the parenting path than most of my friends, I want to share some things that have worked for us (knowing that there are also other good ways to do things.)

Topics I expect to write more on:

• balancing your drive to address big problems in the world with your personal wellbeing
• research on child health (reducing risk of lead poisoning, etc)
• EA-flavored reflections on raising children

What would you like to see me write about? I’d love it if you leave ideas here!