Years in Review

Skip to the end of this post where I write out my prediction for everyone in the journalism business.

I was pulled in a lot of directions this year and wrote less than in years past, but a few things came together:

1.

Over the course of this year, I’ve tried to think a lot about what “lifestyle” writing means. There are so-called lifestyle magazines…

“A distaste for the political dimensions of art, in this time and place, is a dangerous luxury” - Adrienne Rich

2016 was an incredibly challenging year for me. I returned to school after a year off in order to earn my Bachelor’s Degree. I also managed…

I like reading other writers’ submission stats, so I started tracking mine last year when I started submitting more regularly again.

The very first thing I did in 2016 was fall on my face. Around 5am on January 1, my cat bounded into the room and insisted that it was time…

A little over a year ago, I moved from Canada to the US. (My political timing was, uh, impeccable.) The idea was to leave the small…

2016 tricked me into thinking it was going to be a good, productive year. I mainly expected two things: I was going to find permanent…

I spent the start of 2016 in a dead-end, permalance position at a mag I love but in a department that was an odd fit for me. When I gave…

It’s difficult to qualify a single year in the 9x-(estimates vary)-billion-dollar games industry, especially one with as diverse and…

Tweet round-ups are like that day-after-the-party phone call with your aunt where she repeats the jokes she heard that night before. Media…

When it finally dawned on me that I was just a part of the unpaid masses of content creators, I made the decision to stop writing. If I was…

I’ve been a writer for a few years now, but 2016 is the year my career took off. Despite the obvious glitch,(an unqualified, sexual…

Thematically, this year didn’t make much more sense than the last one. I still don’t have a beat, for better or worse, and I still blanch…

I began this year wrapping up Cum Shots, a newsletter I’d started writing June of 2015, because I thought I was in love and it certainly…

One of the gifts of this ol’ writing life is somehow being able to make a living by loving aspects of culture that are either obscure…

Last March, I decided to quit my job. I’m a big believer in quitting institutions—I’ve quit sports teams, musical instruments, every famous…

It was in 2016 that I realized if I’m going to be a freelance writer, I need to be medicated. I didn’t know what work anxiety was until I…

Reviewing my first year working as a freelance journalist.

Here are the stories that resonated with me the most this year.

2016 was a banner year for comeback kids and unlikely breakout stars alike: Kermit the Frog reemerged as a meme favorite, an elderly…

I can’t write about my year in writing without acknowledging the year in crisis. They are inseparable. The urgency of the times compelled…