Last week, ECW turned two. What?! Two whole years of listening, writing, doing the thing. I have trouble sticking with things. I think this comes from the seasonal nature of my life up until this point. In high school and college, I only had to bear down and get through a class in a couple months before there was either Christmas or summer break and when it was done, it was done. Then a new year or new semester would start and I would start again with a whole new set of classes. I realized I could pretty much get through anything when I knew it had a scheduled end. But now there is no scheduled end, no holiday break in sight, and it’s up to my own momentum to keep going. Which is why I’m so proud of having made it through two years of working on this project, working towards my dreams and to still be going. I can’t lie, this second year has tested me. There have been so many times over this past year that I’ve wondered why I do this. Why do I give myself deadlines? Why do read so many sources? Why do I write thousands of words that can’t fit in the body of an email? Why do I stress over this thing that no one put any expectation on me to do, but myself? I do it because, out of all the things I’ve picked up and that have fallen by the wayside, that I’ve gotten bored of, or frustrated that I wasn’t perfect at immediately and quit, this is the one thing that I keep coming back to. It’s the one subject I never get tired of thinking about, I never get tired of learning about, and never run out of things to say about. Even as I pick up new interests, hobbies, and passions, this one has remained.
I know that each year I continue to do this, it will continue to grow and evolve, and I’ll learn new things about myself and the way that I work. For Year 2, the overarching theme has been, without a doubt, compromise. When I first started writing about music on this little corner of the internet, I had all the time in the world and nothing else to do, which meant I could easily dedicate all my time and energy to listening to albums, researching, and writing. That’s how I was able to do an essay a week and be a bit ahead of my posting schedule, which created a nice little archive for those weeks where I needed a bit more time. But as I am an adult in a society, I now have a part-time job that keeps me busy and away from my desk 3-4 days a week and I’m still looking for my full-time big-girl job, but without much luck. I’m also just a generally sleepy person with issues focusing, a dependency on my phone, and a propensity for tummy issue flare-ups and coming down with the common cold, which means my already limited energy becomes even less. All of which to say now, even as I’m writing this reflection, my time, attention, and energy is being pulled in many different directions which leaves me having prioritize, make tough choices in terms of where to put my efforts, putting things off, and ultimately having to restructure how I work. Yes, the structure I currently abide by is of my own creation, which should mean that I can move it around and change it as I need, right? But I see this work as training for when I finally land a freelance pitch or, better yet, land that coveted staff writer job where I absolutely have to stick to a deadline and it is immovable because there are others depending on me to do my job so they can do theirs. I don’t want to go from a very flexible set-up of my own making to a very structured set-up and struggle in the transition. I want to treat my work now with as much weight and validity as I will treat my work for a publication.
But with that, that means I am very hard on myself when I have to miss a deadline, which I have had to do a lot of this past year. That’s in part because of the time and energy issue I mentioned before, but also because my essays have been growing in their scope. Not that anyone asked me to do so, but in order to get a well-rounded sense of an album’s reception, I find myself reading a lot of reviews from many different publications, from the big names that I always read like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and NME, to smaller publications and even blogs or university student publications. All of which, I hope, gives my essays a wide breadth of perspective as I consider additional viewpoints rather than just my own to form my conclusion. But it also means that my essays are now taking twice as long, if not longer, to complete than when I first started out. So I have had to learn a tough lesson about being flexible, compromising on my publishing day changing from Fridays to Mondays and now aiming for bi-weekly rather than weekly, and trusting that shifting, changing, and adjusting is much better than quitting.
In this second year, I’ve also added another component to my music writer journey—I now make video content on TikTok. I’ve dabbled in making content before, even before I started this newsletter. It started after I graduated college, was waiting to go to grad school, and needed an outlet to practice putting myself out there and trying to get comfortable being perceived. My natural more-introverted nature meant that I told no one in my personal life about it, but I did write about it for anyone who read my other newsletter. After a particular video that inundated me with the less-than-kindest comments, I kinda gave up on it, figuring I’m too soft and sensitive for the internet. But after talking with a new friend, who is also a music writer and one I look up to immensely, she encouraged me to make content to accompany my essays, so I decided to try again. For the most part, it’s been a good exercise. It has me having to rethink and rework my long-form writing into a short 5 minute or less video, hitting on the most relevant points. It’s taught me skills in video editing, which are always useful. And when I had another video do pretty well, but again was met with a comment section full of bad faith arguments, it forced to develop a thicker skin rather quickly. Thankfully this experience did not stop me from making videos, as it did the first time, but now I do accept that these experiences come with the territory and each time this inevitably happens in the future, I hope I know better now to engage in real conversations of critique or difference of perspective and ignore the rest.
Going into Year 3, I do have a few updates to share:
1) As much as I would very much be doing this anyway without getting paid, I would love for there to be some world in which I don’t have to get a full-time job and split my time between working 40 hours a week and doing this. Rather, I could dedicate those 40 hours to this, becoming more consistent and building out some of the larger project ideas I have for this platform AND get paid for it and have this be my job. Wouldn’t that be something? I was never sure if anyone would be willing to pay me for the time and work I put into these, but I don’t know if I don’t try so the first step of trying that out is simply offering a tipping option. It’s totally voluntary and pay-as-you-wish, I understand this is not the best of times to be asking for anyone to part with what little disposable income they may have. But if you’ve ever enjoyed reading one of my essays, learned something, listened to something you might not have otherwise, or even felt mad at something I wrote, I would be so appreciative for your support.
I’ve linked below my Ko-fi account. The content on here will continue to be free as the whole point of this project is to democratize cultural criticism and journalism, so it has always and will continue to always be free. But, as I already struggle with time efficiency and energy management, adding on extras for paying subscribers is not something I’m able to scale towards at this time. Never say never, but for now, just to start out, I’m hoping you’ll consider donating for the time and research I put into this essays.
2) With the rise of AI slop and hallucinations, never mind the disastrous effects it’s having on our planet, I just wanted to make a quick statement on my AI usage. Short and simple, I don’t use generative AI. The most contact I have with AI is the automatic Gemini pop-up that appears whenever I Google something. I will typically only pull from it if I’m fact-checking something simple like a date and I feel relatively okay doing that as I’ve not yet heard of Google AI hallucinating incorrect information for something like that. But if, and I fear when, there are issues with Google AI, I will fact-check my fact-checks by double-checking the associated links the Google AI gives just to confirm that what the AI is saying the source says is actually what it says, which I already do for anything else I search beyond a simple date. As for using any generative AI to write my essays, I don’t. Any em dashes you see are all me, and you can pry them from my cold, dead hands. My spelling mistakes, poor syntax, and structuring issues that I once thought revealed the fraud that I think I am, I now see it as hopefully showing the real person behind the writing. I am human, I make mistakes, I don’t always catch them in editing, but I do all of my own research and write all of my own work and of that I am very proud.
3) An exciting update!! I have so many ideas for stories I want to tell and projects I want to build, including…an interview series! I’ve long been interested in how artists are using, or in some cases forced to used, the internet in promotion of their music and how that affects a whole host of things from their relationship to their art, their relationship to their fans, and how we authenticate these artists online. I’m still very much in the early stages of this project, doing lots of reading to solidify a line of questioning I want to pursue, and I have a few artists already contacted who are interested in participating, but I would love to have more! So if you’re a musician posting your music online and would like to chat about how you use the internet, please send me an email!! On top of that, I have a series I started and then accidentally abandoned on the 1975 and breaking down their most recent live show into the themes at play. It’s been nearly a year since I’ve written the first installment in that series and I’m cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless that I can make it back to that series and keep it going. And who’s to say what else will capture my attention this year? That’s what makes this whole thing so exciting.
One of the biggest surprises of this last year has been hearing from some of you! I have received some very kind and encouraging comments, messages, and emails and I truly never expected that, but am so grateful for it. I’ve heard of my work being used in college lectures to talk about online journalism and the creator economy, I’ve been asked to participate in undergraduate projects about online creators on Substack, and I’ve even found myself included in a round-up of Substack creators to follow. I’ve also been added to some press lists for small labels and artists who have reached out to send me their work, which I’m honored to be included even if I can’t always guarantee coverage. I know it’s one thing to just say I’m grateful and appreciative, but I really do mean it. All of you, all 271 of you as it currently stands, are helping to make my dreams of writing and talking about music professionally come true and I just can’t wait to see where we can go from here. So again, thank you thank you thank you for being here, and here’s to another year!
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