Right. So. Now what?
2015 was not as stressful as 2014. That I can say with some certainty.
2014 was, by and large, a fight, composed of an unending series of negotiations, both internal and external. I’ll spare you the details, but broadly speaking, that year was principally structured around a single question: when it’s done, will I be allowed to build a life in America? It was a traumatic year, and to this day, I can still feel traces of it. In the tightness of my chest in the mornings, in a vague claustrophobia that never goes away, in bouts of insomnia that visit me every few weeks. But 2014 was also an unmistakably good year. I learned that if faced with a huge and merciless problem, I can stand my ground. I also learned that — forgive me for the schmaltz here — love and some good people can take you a long way. And that yes, indeed, I would be granted the opportunity to build a life here.
So that was 2014: a conceptually simple problem marked by a series of unambiguous challenges.
2015, while certainly less overtly stressful, was something of a shit show. Granted a place here, I was now faced with the question of how to live. Goodness, I cringe even writing that sentence. It is perhaps one of the most clichéd problems afflicting a good chunk of people within a certain class, educational background, internalized cultural values, privilege — and I struggle to situate myself within the truth that I am all of those things while also being a non-white immigrant with not a lot of means of structural support. But it was a question that affected me, and I am fairly certain I did a terrible job at it.
In 2015, I tried wearing a few different skins — an “analyst,” a “journalist,” a “person in media,” an “expert in something,” a “writer”— and each skin feels so weird to me, so loose and uncomfortable and so designed for someone else. I worked a few different jobs, with varying degrees of effectiveness (and I do mean varying; I’m so sorry to everyone I’ve ever let down). I’m currently holding a job that has brought me the closest to feeling even a little bit okay, but even then, the skin remains loose and scratchy; a suit made for adults, a rental. I tried living like other people — searching out hobbies, signing up for a gym (again), going out, subscribing to The New Yorker — which held some occasional pleasures, though none sustained. I kept a close eye on the Internet to keep up with opinions, tried having them; many of them sound pretty good, and some were certainly important, but I struggled beneath the weight of their volume. Tried yoga, it hurt. Tried Soylent, didn’t like it. Tried seeing a therapist, it was good until it wasn’t. Tried calling my parents more, which is okay. Started saving as much money as I could in anticipation for some kind of fall (of myself? of the economy? of civilization? not sure), because that’s what responsible people do. That felt good until I realized I couldn’t even imagine a life at 40, at 30, shit, even at 28, then I started questioning the entire endeavor, and then felt stupid because I knew I was falling into the thing that adults say all the time, that stupid young people think they’re going to live forever, and then I get confused because I always feel like I’m just steps away before meeting the end.
Anyway, I’m writing this Year In Review piece because I wanted to write something conceivably reflective about Hot Pod, this weird little newsletter about podcasts that I started in late 2014 and for some reason kept writing all the way through 2015 — all the way through everything that’s happened — up until now. But I think I got a little bit too caught up in reviewing the year in Nick Quah, so brace yourself for a hard, non-sequitur segue, because nobody reads anything that’s too long, or so I’m told by thought leaders.
It took me a while to realize the following: Hot Pod is probably the best work I’ve done in any thing and any form. Scruffy, shoddy, haphazardly-written, it has become the source of much self-worth, a core pillar of my identity, a thing that I look forward to every week — even when it’s been a long week, even when I’m hungover, even when my mild bouts of what I recognize to be the thing that’s a little more than a mere psychological heaviness proved to be particularly strong. I write Hot Pod for free, though I now pocket some money when Nieman Lab started syndicating it earlier this year, and then a little more later when I briefly opened it up for donations. It often takes a fair bit of work to prepare, which I do on the off-hours: late at night, early in the morning, weekends.
Hot Pod grew this year. More people started reading it. It maxed out its free Tinyletter account (I now have to start paying to keep it going via MailChimp). It got longer and longer, and then it got slightly shorter and a bit more organized. It started covering more things, and then due to increasing time crunches on my end, it got a little lazy and started covering less. It got more enthusiastic, then less, then more, then less again. More people started talking to me. More strangers started to trust me. Some folks at really professional places asked me to comment on professional things. (I have yet to grow comfortable with this.) It got more serious, became more of an actual responsibility.
(Indeed, it’s strange to consider that something you never meant to be a thing ended up being a big thing about you.)
I guess I got a little scared at the end of 2015. I’ve never been taken seriously like this before. I suppose I’ve been making excuses for Hot Pod — it’s too unprofessional, it’s too shoddy, it can’t possibly be a good thing. That, I think, is the thing I will fight against the most in 2016. My excuses, my detachment, my fear. (And my narcissism, probably.)
***
And because it’s a year in review, here are five things I’m proud of:
“Planes, Trains, Acquisitions” (Hot Pod, July 25)
“The Netflix-YouTube-Twitter-Starbucks of Podcasting” (Hot Pod, August 18)
“Patronage, Screenshorting Audio, and the Cleveland Browns” (Hot Pod, September 8)
“One Year In” (Hot Pod, November 10)
“The 10 Best Podcasts and 10 Best Podcast Episodes of 2015” (Vulture, December 11)
Okay. See you later.
