Top 10 reasons I didn’t write this newsletter in 2023: Part II

Oops, I did it again

Really didn’t mean to make this failure-to-write thing a series, but here we are! To give you a sense of just how much I’ve neglected this space, I recently realized my automatic “thanks for subscribing” email still includes a reference to Jonathan Majors? Oy. Resolving to update that outgoing message in 2024.

It’s 3:30 p.m. on December 31st and the sun is setting on the year. And also literally. Curse these dark days! I have a candle and two soft lamps lit; in the periphery I can see Andrew mowing down zombies in Call of Duty as he plots his next move with friends over his headset. (I’ve always found his enthusiasm while gaming really endearing.) As for me, I have a New Year’s outfit laid out and my hair is air drying. I’m playing dark electronic music in my headphones and racing to get this out before we head out to our favorite sushi spot. 

I’ll admit this newsletter’s title is a bit of a stunt, because I won’t go through the tedium of listing reasons I didn’t write. Instead I’ll just cull together a few random contemplations from the year. 

1. This was the year my longtime professional dream of becoming an arts and culture editor came true. As I’ve said, it took forever. Catching up with my old roommate from my mid twenties reminded me just how long. “Omigod, I’m so happy for you, I remember you talking about that!” she said, squeezing me. 

   I don’t know why I keep writing about this. I find it embarrassing to admit something was hard-won. Effort, trying, or my real fear – being tryhard – is discomfiting. I’d rather be one of those people for which things just fall into place and accept my fate with a cool shrug, as though it were an evitability. 

   Turning this over in my mind over the years, I think the reason it took so long – and the reason I can’t help myself in indulging in an excited, “I did that shit” attitude toward it – is because, aside from not living in a big city where there are more opportunities, I didn’t have a whole lot of direction or encouragement. Eek, I don’t mean to sound coarse or ungrateful. Hear me out. My parents, long-divorced and individually speaking, are both so incredibly loving and supportive. But also… they each tried to gently steer me away from the journalism track. My mom is more of a business gal and ushered me toward practicality (state jobs were her go-to recommendation), while my dad, ever monitoring market trends, feared the very real challenges graduates of the humanities faced (when I graduated, he was convinced being a paralegal was a great fall-back). 

   But a belief I’ve always held in an effort to counter those diversions is, why not me, why couldn’t I have the profession I want? Life, and a lot of jobs, are hard for various reasons. Why not do the one thing, out of many hard things, I actually enjoy and am decent at? I think intuiting that is the one thing that kept me working toward it. Jack Antonoff recently said something very similar in a recent video interview, which was very heartening! Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t give up, and I’m grateful 2023 was a year I worked hard at a job that challenged me in the right ways. I mostly edited this year, but did write a few stories I loved working on.

2. This was the year I felt the first pangs of aging into a new cultural space. Things that play out in pop culture that are reminiscent of the recent past feel familiar to me, yet strangely out of reach. It’s a dissonant experience, one that makes it feel like a song or fashion trend is from you, but not for you. Dear god, is this how my mom felt when a Biggie song came on that she recognized as a Mtume melody? I mean, it’s not exactly that. I need more time to think this one through… 

   Another thought in this vein is how unfortunate it is that millennial shit is akin to cringe. It makes sense, you won’t find me defending hustle culture or statement necklaces! Talk about tryhard. Sort of leads me to my next thought…

3. This year I felt increasingly estranged from my internet identity. I’m not sure how to be online. For much of the year, I didn’t post any feed posts on Instagram, a space where I used to be active on to keep momentum going (whatever that means), promote my now-defunct blog, keep content partnerships going etc. Without a blog, plus contending with the frivolity of it all and general social media fatigue, I guess I didn’t know how to be. I’m still figuring it out, but was surprised to find I still experienced a little bump in endorphins when this week I suddenly published a spurt of feed posts. 

Well, I don’t have time for a neat conclusion, but it’s been nice to visit y’all in your inboxes once again! Thanks for letting me pop by for my (pretty much annual) hello.