Cry, Freedom: My 2015 in Review
This was the year I went full-time freelance. Which, depending on how you look at it, meant liberty or lunacy. I had one of the magazine world’s most wonderfully vague titles—“editor-at-large” at Fast Company—which came with a regular paycheck and benefits but no cubicle or expectation of coming into the office. Why would I give that up? “It is a dream job!” several people told me before I quit. Eventually, I realized: It might be a dream job for someone, but not for me. I will always treasure my many years there, but people change and so do magazines—the stories I love to tell and the stories FC loves to tell are not, for the most part, the same anymore.
No bullshit: Freelancing has been hard. Since leaving FC at the beginning of June, I have had two months during which I made zero dollars from writing. Eight days after I bought a new laptop to replace my FC one, I spilled a full glass of water on it—a $1,903.14 error. I’ve battled my lifelong shyness and wondered whether my inability to network will cripple or even kill my career. I’ve taken assignments that are not the kind of stories I love to tell—an acknowledgment of the reality of having a mortgage and living in NYC. I spent most of one month reporting and trying to write a piece that I wasn’t right for; after weeks of interviews and two agonizing drafts, I wrote the editor to say that I’d done all I could do and that he probably ought to find another writer. I got paid nothing. The editor never replied.
Here’s the good: I learned that, with writing, I’m not as bad a procrastinator as I thought—I’m even worse with paperwork and filing expenses. I know I’m lucky, too—I get to file expenses, which means I travel with other people’s money. Several assignments netted me $2 a word or more. Extraordinary people invited me into their homes, experiences, hearts, and lives. Also, I’ve never prayed or cried so much—perhaps this has been good both for my faith and my emotional openness?
There’s a bit in the intro to Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus in which she writes about the creature’s discernment skills, as observed in an experiment: “It doesn’t take long for an octopus to figure out who his friends are… Within a week, at first sight of the people—looking up at them through the water, without even touching or tasting them—most of the octopuses moved toward the feeder and away from the irritator.” I am slower than the octopus. It has taken me more than a week to learn who feeds me—not just as a writer and reporter but also as a friend and a pilgrim trying to make his way through this confusing world—and who irritates. But this year has helped clarify immensely.
Indeed, freelancing has affirmed for me the importance of community. With gratitude, I think of my infinitely patient, generous husband. Of the friends who sent notes, texts, encouragement, and love while I was in Uganda—and, somehow, at some of my darkest moments. Of the close readers who have helped make my work better. Of journalists and essayists whom I’ve never met except through their inspirational work—Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Pamela Colloff and Roxane Gay and Leslie Jamison—whose every paragraph makes me want to be better, smarter, clearer. Of those musicians whose artistry fueled my writing—the sound of my 2015 was Beach House and Adele, Audrey Assad and Hillsong’s “Oceans.” Of those who have kindly tweeted and shared my stories. Though it may be my name in the byline, journalism is never solo work.
The highlights of my writing year:
Making It Work (Inc., June): What a humbling gift to be invited into the world of so many people on the autism spectrum and learn how they see life and navigate the workplace. The piece was commissioned and edited by the brilliant James Ledbetter, whom I came to respect and admire when we worked together years ago at Time in London.
African Bishop Fights to Get Children to Iowa (Des Moines Register, August): I spent July on an International Reporting Project religion fellowship (if you have an idea for a religion- or health-related story, check it out). I reunited with my buddy Tim Meinch, a Register reporter who also worked on the Westboro Baptist Church chapter of my book with me. The first piece we produced focuses on a South Sudanese Episcopal bishop, Samuel Peni, who’s trying to send his kids to be adopted by a family in the U.S. He asked new friends: “Will you take my children so they will not die?” (Who says that?!) We’ve still got some stories to come, from the most emotionally taxing reporting trip of my career, about the spiritual lives of LGBTQ people in Uganda.
Generation Hong Kong (Travel + Leisure, October): This piece, which I reported while visiting my grandmother in June, almost didn’t happen because I almost died on the trip. I am the fool who goes hiking on a near-shadeless uphill trail in 85-degree heat and 85-percent humidity with a heavy backpack and too little water. Anyway, I survived. And I got to share with the world a side of my beloved Hong Kong that’s different from what travel writers usually feature. And I got to work with Jacqui Gifford, who is so deft and kind an editor that even her harshest criticism—always right—feels like a hug.
A Little Life Is the Best Novel of the Year. I Wouldn’t Recommend It to Anyone (Vox, October): I marvel at people who can write seemingly personal essays more than, say, once a year—that’s about all I have in me. The most personal piece I’ve ever written, this is a book review of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life that isn’t really a book review. Yanagihara’s novel broke something open in me, forcing me to confront trauma in my own life that I’d tried to bury. On this piece, I got to work with Emmett Rensin, whose wise editing compelled me to simplify and sharpen.
Finally, one that isn’t journalism—
Together at the Table (Gay Christian Network Conference, January): Nobody ever told me that becoming a writer would require so much talking. That’s been especially true in the years since my book was published. I was the opening keynoter at the GCN Conference in Portland, a humbling and crazy and gratifying experience. (I cried what one friend told me were “ugly Oprah tears.” So I’m posting the text, not the video—I’m vain.)
In Emmett Rensin’s edit of my essay on A Little Life, he wrote a note that I’ve revisited repeatedly: “You can do better.” He was right in that specific instance. And generally? Some days I believe it, some I don’t. I’ve never thought so often about quitting writing—and yet I’ve never loved it so much.
