A Year of Words Making Their Ways to the Internet
If a tree falls in a forest and it doesn’t publish anything online, did it have a 2014? I tweeted that earlier this week, but then I realized I had published things online. Multiple things! Things that I was proud of, even: stories and feelings and science and facts. That’s a nice thing about the internet — everything is all in one place, and it stays there for easy retrospection. (Sometimes that’s a not-nice thing about the internet, but it works for our purposes today.)
In 2014, here’s what was published by this tree:
One essay, “Aftermath,” started in 2011, finished in 2013, about a few months of my life in 2009 and 2010: I left/lost my job in nonprofit theatre and, adrift with the global economy, landed as a receptionist at a medical aid NGO. A few months later, an earthquake struck Haiti, and I was the person answering the phones. It took me so long to figure out how to write this, how to show all the things I still don’t understand about suffering, generosity, selfishness, and how people try to help.
“9 Things You Should Know About The Internet And Your Brain.” I wanted to write this to save my own brain. Maybe awareness is the first step toward change? Hold on, lemme check twitter, brb.
Eleven posts for Astrobites. I started there last November, a sneaky MFA student among all the astrophysics PhDs, but 2014 was my first full year of writing about science. I’m very proud of having written the title “Habitability Whether Rocks Weather Or Not,” but my favorite piece was “How Weird Is Our Solar System,” which was picked up by The Planetary Society, and led to—
One guest post at The Planetary Society, “The Habitable Zone of Inhabited Planets,” about a cool, recursive idea about habitability being determined by whether a planet is inhabited.
21 episodes of The Catapult, my podcast, which debuted in March. This was home to none of my own writing, but some of my own words, in the rambling welcomes and introductions to the work of the 42 writers featured on the podcast this year.
Not online? 224 feedback letters to my students, the 28 college freshman to whom I brought the gospel of the academic essay. (4 essays x 2 drafts x 14 students x 2 semesters)
I also went to Colonial Williamsburg in March and started writing about that. Living history museums are weird, fun places — I’ve always loved them; I went to Colonial Williamsburg for a spring break in college, for chrissake — but they also make me question the way we understand American history and identity. It feels like Colonial Williamsburg is telling me, “Jaime, this is your history!” Which is a lovely thought, but whenever this history took place, my people were off planting potatoes or running from Cossacks or doing whatever it was one did in Eastern Europe while America was growing up over here. I’m headed to more living history museums this spring — that’s another piece of writing that isn’t on the internet, the grant application I wrote for that — but there’ll be more on this for you all someday soon, I hope.
