necessary updates
breaking my silence...
Hi everyone! It’s been far too long since I posted on here. I’ve done a decent amount of interviewing and researching in the last few months on a new story, but it’s been slow going. When I am not working, I’m reading a LOT, and I’ve also had some other, more pressing, matters to focus on, which I can finally share publicly.
Last fall and winter, I began the process to apply for graduate programs in English literature. That might seem like a wild pivot to some of you, but those close to me know this is something I’ve known that I would want to do someday, when the moment was right. Now is that time.
I was accepted into a few programs, but after some deliberation (which included considering staying in the city, or journalism, or both) I decided to take the University of Tennessee’s fully funded offer to join their English Master’s program in Knoxville. I also received a teaching stipend, so next year I’ll be leading classes of my own. (‼️)
It’s all very exciting, but this was still a difficult decision to make. The last two and a half years in New York — and the last year in Brooklyn, specifically — have been some of the best of my life. I’ve made friends and learned lessons I’ll carry with me forever, and I feel I’ve grown a lot as a person and a writer. But I know it’s time to move on.
Unless you live under a rock (which, if you’re reading this, you probably don’t), you’ve seen the carnage large corporations and billionaires have wreaked upon media outlets. As someone who witnessed close friends laid off from reporting jobs before I ever graduated college, I knew going into this industry that journalism would be a far from stable career path. But now, almost six years after I decided I wanted to dedicate my life to it, the situation is increasingly dire. Even my current employer, which I’ve stayed at for the entire time I’ve lived in New York partially due to its reputation for stability, recently decided to lay off 10% of our newsroom despite that being against the terms of the collective bargaining agreement it has with our union. And I don’t think it’s worth the risk — or the sacrifice — for me to stay and try to hack it out full time there, or elsewhere.
For a while I’ve struggled with what it would mean for me to leave journalism. Now I realize that, for one thing, going to grad school doesn’t preclude me from returning to the field later, and for another, I never have to fully leave it. So many friends and other writers whose work I admire are freelance, and the only things stopping me from doing the same are time and motivation.
Basically, all of this is to explain: I spent the last few months trying to figure all this out, including if I wanted to continue this newsletter. I’m going to try to, even if that means the writing has a little bit of a different focus and tenor than the pieces I’ve published in the past. This is called Cosmic Gumbo, after all.
I can guarantee that I’ll complete the project I have in progress (which has involved some of my favorite interviews I’ve ever conducted) and publish it before I leave for Tennessee in the fall, so stay tuned for that. And if you have any suggestions for subjects you want to read me yap about, please let me know!
Thank you for reading and for continuing to subscribe despite my erratic, sporadic posting habits.
