a repetitive reality
My roommate keeps a 365-day tearaway quote calendar in our bathroom that has a simultaneous direct and vague voice akin to a fortune cookie. Sometimes, my roommate is days behind in terms of ripping to the current page. Other days, he is with the rest of us, in the ever-confusing present. For July 7th, the quote was “Embrace the chaos. You got this.”
If this were an ordinary year, I would have thought to myself, Wow, I really needed to hear that and gone on with my day. But on account of being several months into a pandemic, I instead thought Are you fucking kidding me? What am I supposed to do with that?
The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Cut, The Atlantic, and Medium (to name a few) have produced enough think pieces about quarantine fashion, tie-dye sweatshirts, and in-depth analyses of the latest streamable television shows for my Squarespace account to collect digital dust for the past couple of months. I’ve known for a while that I tie my self-worth to productivity, so I’ve binged watch a disgusting amount of shows to avoid thinking about writing—which includes Normal People. Party Down, Little Fires Everywhere, Dead to Me, Love, Victor, Good Trouble, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, and probably more.
Along with so many others who work in the media and publishing industries or aspire to, I have been facing hard truths about my career aspirations, and wondering just how far an English degree will actually get me. In college I took an intensive seminar about literary editing and publishing, and while I found the class to be enjoyable and informative, I feel as though we did not spend enough time covering the disparities in publishing regarding race and gender. However, I was introduced to VIDA, a nonprofit organization that conducts a study every year on various publications based on who they publish (with categories based on gender identity and race). Since learning about them, I haven’t stopped advocating for them or donating when I can.
It is disheartening and eye-opening to realize how hard it is to claim a space in publishing, especially for women (even more so for women who aren’t wealthy or well-connected) —but that only means it’s twice as hard for someone who does not look like me or have a similar background to do so. In acknowledging this, I have to admit my own privilege—in college, I was able to take a nearly six-months-long unpaid internship at a magazine because I was living in a dorm, and working nights and weekends. It’s one thing to say that publishing should be for everyone, but it’s another thing to ignore why it wasn’t set up that way to begin with.
The depictions of book and magazine publishing in the media, like The Bold Type and Younger, present us with a world full of power lunches and quick promotions, outfits that go beyond the realm of the oxymoron that is business casual. It’s fun, and easy to watch, and I willingly absorb it. But as charming as these shows are, essayist Sloane Crosley pointed out for The New York Times back in 2019: “But by far the strangest and most glaring commonality [in Hollywood’s depictions of publishing] is the presumption of glamour.” Sure, I haven’t even stepped foot in a major publishing house, but in my experience working with small-staffed magazines, there is more grit than glamour. But I have in no shame in admitting that I was sold on the idea of publishing that Crosley deconstructs in her essay. What’s at stake is determining the importance between the idea of an editor and what an editor actually does. And I guess that’s what I have been grappling with the most—do I want to be an idea of something, or the actual thing?
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Ironically enough, it took a pandemic for me to get a 9-to-5 schedule, as opposed to only working nights and the occasional brunch shifts. With my almost six-year tenure in the service industry I was dealt an Irish goodbye amid the restaurant and bar closings in Ohio, with no forseeable return. Crowds in front of the host stand are a thing of the past—hell, crowds (in indoor spaces) are a thing of the past. I’ve replaced that world with insurance lingo and phone extensions, pleasantries served à la carte.
There’s no way of sugarcoating it, not even with a witty Tweet or goofy meme: 2020 has been hard in ways I never thought it would be. And I don’t wish for my old routines, my old life, not even my old self. One of the main phrases that’s been circling my social media feeds is “We will never go back to normal.” And its eerieness rings true regardless of how I, or anyone else feels about it. Not only are we learning more about the world we live in, and digging deeper into our own communities—we are learning more about ourselves in a way that we never have before, in the sense that we have the time to look deeper. We have the time to put in the work to learn. And if we ever feel uncomfortable, that’s a good thing. We’re bound to fuck up and I already have, more than once. There’s only so many things to use as distractions before I have to deal with myself, and sitting with my feelings of confusion, loneliness, impostor syndrome, and anger—and realizing where those feelings are coming from rather than burying them. I’m past the point of clinging to optimism that borders on preachiness, a tone that I have used in my previous posts that I now realize comes across as cringey and perhaps naive. I realize that just because I consider myself a well-meaning person, it doesn’t mean that I’m always going to get hard conversations “right” or always sound articulate and educated. My attempts at genuinity can fall flat.
To answer my own question from a couple of posts ago, I don’t know what to write about during a pandemic. Or rather, I don’t know what to write about during a pandemic AND a crucial social justice movement without unintentionally sounding self-absorbed. My self-awareness can be so intense that I become anxious and shut down, and question everything about myself, everything I’ve ever written or created. I (Grace) have been interrupted for quite some time, which is both a good and bad thing. During this time away I’ve thought about how to be more mindful of posting, and what my intentions are/will be when I am feeling inspired.
I have been jotting down some ideas lately, though, and don’t want to step away from blogging for a long stretch of time again. I’ve missed it here.
Talk soon,
Grace