hello! welcome to the first post on my newsletter-ish. I’m so happy you’re here. today is Indigenous People’s Day: I invite you to celebrate it by checking out Beyond Buckskin’s list of Indigenous shops, @iceagebaby’s thread on Indigenous movies/shows, and my friend Anna Maria’s Twitter thread.
why is this newsletter in your inbox along with promotional email campaigns you can’t seem to unsubscribe from, no matter how hard you try???
I am probably the least successful journal user around: I remain completely incapable of writing for myself, as evidenced by the multiple (we’re talking in the double digits) started-then-abandoned diaries over my lifetime.
this newsletter is coming from someone who got used to the steady rush of writing opinions in the school newspaper and sleeping tight knowing that someone out there would see it. I desire the ability to write for an audience that reads my words — or at least skims them. as a a result, I haven’t written anything of my own volition for five months.
but I don’t think it’s so bad to miss writing for people, or to miss bouncing ideas back and forth. most importantly, writing for an audience requires having to select and choose sentences and words that flow with cadence and punch at the right times. so here I am, writing for you. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
hi, my name is ______ and I am a ______
whenever I play any kind of video game that requires character customization (think sims, skyrim, etc.) I spend no less than an hour agonizing over the tiny choices that might later decide how well my character does. it’s so bad that even the customization menu on mario kart stumps me (speed vs. weight??? who knows what difference this makes??? not me acting like it will make a difference as I willfully accelerate too early and lose every race)
lately, and by lately I mean for the past six months — I’ve been feeling frozen at the character selection screen of my life. navigating the post-grad fog has been much harder than I thought it would be. without the pandemic pressing the pause button on my life, I think I would have seamlessly swapped my student journalist title for a Corporate Cog title and gone on to find the next title, the next hat to wear, successfully avoiding all self-introspection until the day I died. instead, with a delayed job offer and the red carpet of senior year yanked out under my feet, I found myself in identity free-fall.
this summer, no longer able to call myself a student and feeling increasingly unable to call myself a journalist, I filled all my free time with new possible roles to define myself with: working with mutual aid (organizer?), designing for local campaigns (volunteer?), serially doing senior graduation shoots (photographer?), and focusing on revamping my art instagram (artist?).
in the midst of a pandemic and a national racial reckoning, it felt extremely self-indulgent to spend my post-grad space trying to relax and fiNd mYSeLf for the first time in 16 years. but one month into this attempt at finding a new box to cram my identity in, I was burnt out and even more disillusioned with the prospect of ever being able to feel confidence in who I am. I dropped my volunteer efforts and stopped doing shoots; I spent that time doom-scrolling instead, and felt all the worse for it.
in this liminal space (fancy word I saw on twitter that I may be misusing), I’ve reflected a lot on how capitalistic ideals drive how I define myself. reliably, measures of productivity are how I allow myself certain titles. if my life was a game, I’m always trying to gain enough XP to level up and achieve the next possible title. can I be an artist, if I only make art every two months? am I really a writer if all the writing happens in my head and never makes it onto a page? was I ever a journalist if I didn’t publish in a “real” publication?
but faced with a pretty unromantic corporate career ahead of me, I feel increasingly disenchanted with the idea of branding myself with the work I do, with the things I accomplish, and with the idea of branding myself altogether. my previous experiences capitalizing and monetizing on activities that used to be fun and relaxing have made my worm brain unwilling to do any of them again: reading and writing feel like work thanks to school and grinding frantically to meet deadlines; art feels like work after years of doing freelance graphic design for money; even scheduling facetime calls with friends feels like work after months of online classes and remote work meetings.
in my free time, I instead find myself turning to the very few activities left that feel unattached from any kind of work: scrolling on my phone (although even that is slowly turning into work: social media managers rise up), playing video games, mindlessly binge-watching shows, and aimlessly window shopping online. there’s nothing wrong with those activities, but I can’t help but notice that the former group of activities involves production, and the second consumption. the only activities that I find somewhat relaxing are activities where I am a consumer. equally daunting is the realization that the more-expanded list of activities I enjoyed pre-quarantine were also consumption: eating out at restaurants, going to concerts, and otherwise spending money to consume. capitalism strikes again!
unfortunately, I haven’t found the perfect solution to this cycle of working, then “relaxing,” then feeling bad for relaxing all while my most creative hobbies languish and gather dust. and I imagine that this is a cycle that will take a long, long time to break. but I welcome the challenge of redefining my attachment to work and productivity because the possibilities on the other side are promising: a way to define myself outside of capitalism, and a way to re-embrace activities I cherish without exhausting myself.
(alternatively, if you’ve got it figured out, dm me).
some diamonds amidst the sludge of the internet
the central idea behind this newsletter-ish is one long thought (above) and several disjointed thoughts and recommendations. at this point in quarantine I spend upwards of 8 hours a day on my phone (I am fully aware that this is bad for me but can I stop? no) and therefore consume way too much Information. one tweet that I remember frequently is “in the middle ages, you smelled bad but at least you were only exposed to one take every year” or something along those lines. given that, here are some of the Things that have penetrated even the noisiest social media feed, and that I recommend for people both super online and not:
you should read: “buying myself back: when does a model buy her own image?” by emily ratajkowski (emrata) — a brilliant and vulnerable essay on how the male-directed fashion and art industries can prey upon even the most successful icons.
t/w: the piece mentions sexual assault.
here are some questions I am still thinking through:
how can edgy, subversive contemporary art not harm someone in the process? if so, at what point does subversion become unacceptably harmful, and who gets to determine that?
while digital storage has made it almost inevitable that recorded trauma and mistakes last forever, art has been doing this forever (as evidenced by several incidents in her story). what are other incidents of harm that have been preserved and even lauded in the art world for centuries?
can you copyright yourself? is legislation/law the only route in which you can preserve your image and how it’s used?
you should read: “review of houston eviction cases finds most moving forward despite federal moratorium” , stellar reporting by local journalist jen rice. rice sat in on over 100 eviction cases in Houston, finding that most are still happening despite a national order from the CDC (directed by trump) to universally halt most evictions nationwide. it is a short but highly informative piece that shows the disconnect between trump’s posturing and the actual impact on the ground, on real families. rice’s reporting on houston evictions has in general been spot on — highlighting especially (democratic) mayor sylvester turner’s refusal to enact an eviction moratorium. meanwhile, houston is the #1 metro with highest amount of residents experiencing housing insecurity.
you should listen to poet & rapper chika (find her tiny desk concert here). i’m also seeking songs that sound similar to cinnamon girl by asl and other tracks that sound like nostalgia!
you should read “inside ebay’s cockroach cult: the ghastly story of a stalking scandal” (nyt subscription required — lmk if you need help). this story is literally batshit crazy but also a very concerning look into what goes on in seemingly innocuous companies (I mean — ebay??? a little embarrassing). a long, new-yorker-style read that is begging to be made into a netflix original.
you should know that 90% of republicans who listen to exclusively fox news or talk radio think the u.s. has controlled covid-19 as much as possible, compared to 97% of democrats who use msnbc, cnn, npr, nytimes or wapo as their primary news source who think the opposite. these numbers were a shocker to me, especially the first statistic. not to rehash the tired eChO cHamBeR point, but it really is important to get reminders on how the media shapes narratives, and how those narratives can be patently false.
if you made it this far, you are officially my favorite person and have genuinely made my week!!! please comment/text/message me any thoughts you have or let me know if you end up reading/listening to any of the recs above. also, if you have a friend who you think would like this newsletter, you can share it with them using the button below:
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