What Will I Blog About?

Finding My Writing Voice

Honestly, I’ve been asking myself the same question.

Other than my horrendous teenage Tumblr blog, I’ve only blogged twice. I wrote about my first academic research experience at Northwestern University and described the culture, political climate, and secondary education of Madrid, Spain during a semester abroad.

In 2017 and 2016, I wrote graduate-level theses at two ‘Big Ten Universities.’ Developing, creating, and researching to defend a thesis invigorated me. The resources were plentiful, and the universities paid well. The writing and research noticeably influenced my current writing voice, style, and tone. My friends and family didn’t understand essential terms in my research like: counterpublic, netnography, and democratization.

In the end, producing research felt solitary. I focused on exchanging knowledge without stratification instead of continuing with academic writing.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 2018, I craved something different. With a can-do attitude, I worked myself to the bone: hostess for a quasi-bougie restaurant, photography instructor, substitute teacher, and Lyft driver….I once spent days in the library reading and theorizing about encounters that I was living. Life experience can be the best teacher. Meaningful conversations kept drawing me to distinct people and places in the city, and I wanted to write about the lessons I was learning. I thought pitching articles to news publications I admired was the answer, and in part, it was.

After some time, I noticed that freelancing felt just like another institution. Threading sources and stories together feel like completing a complex puzzle. I enjoy finding excuses to talk to those I wouldn’t typically approach. However, the process can be complex, time-consuming, and political. Working on stories addressing disenfranchisement, gentrification, and the working class can be controversial. Nonetheless, if powerful, wealthy people stand to lose money behind investigative work, an article may never see the light of day. It shouldn’t be this way, but many hidden costs come with telling the truth, in a world dominated by oppressors.

My creative work is most important because I can relax by experimenting with style, formatting, and imagery. I most enjoy submitting prose, poems, short stories, and essays to small/indie publications. 

This year, I want to use the blog to synthesize some of my experiences and interactions with the music, tv, podcasts, and news that I find thought-provoking.