Category: Writing

It’s been difficult to find the motivation to blog. As quarantine wears on, my role as a primary caregiver has continued on as the most important and time-consuming part of my life. The traditional gender roles I conveyed in my May post have only become more stark as John’s career gets demanding while I continue to drop work I no longer have time or energy to do. 

“It’s awful,” I said to my sister about my quarantine life with an increasingly mobile toddler. “All we do is eat, nap, and play with blocks all day. I’m losing my mind.” 

“That sounds like fun actually,” she pointed out. Maybe complaining about all-day playtime to a very busy and in-demand employment lawyer wasn’t my smartest move. 

Since that conversation, I’ve tried to embrace my new life as a storybook reader, block stacker, and nursery rhyme singer. Like everything else about this quarantine, it feels like it’s gone on forever. So when, every now and then, I get a request for advice, it jolts me back into who I used to be—a niche journalist with ten years of experience reporting on anime, tech, and fandom. 

Like I say on my about page, “my favorite part of [this blog] is getting to connect with students and give them the advice I wish I had received.” That’s truer now than it has ever been. As somebody who launched my own career against the gloomy backdrop of the 2009 recession, my heart goes out to anyone getting their start during such a bleak time. 

I ought to permanently affix “Sorry for the late reply” as a heading to all of my quarantine correspondence, but I have slowly been offering advice to students and young professionals who ask. With their permission, I’ve included some of it here:

1) Get Gigs By Giving Editors Ideas

Not only is it a tough time to break into the field, it’s a tough time to be in the field. Though online ad revenue is down, more people are stuck at home and reading news outlets than ever, so clicks are way up and editors need stories for people to read. Just from hanging out on Twitter, I’ve seen requests from places like Crunchyroll News, Funimation, and Anime News Network that are putting out calls for story pitches because they need new content. 

If I were looking for gigs, I’d be reaching out to these places with story ideas I’d be ready to write for them ASAP. In a cold email, I don’t even think a portfolio of samples is as important as a well-written email with an interesting pitch and the intent to back it up with quick, solid work. It’s less about researching what makes a good story pitch in general, and more about studying previous stories at those outlets and suggesting a story you can write for them that’s both in their wheelhouse and not something they’ve covered in the past. 

2) Pitch The Stories You Want To Read

Is there anything in your preferred beat that you think isn’t getting good coverage? Do you think you have an interesting idea for an in-depth piece that’s not about immediate breaking news? Better yet, can you make a case for an article that only you could write, involving a personal angle or anecdotal experience? Best of all, can you tie an article idea to what’s going on in the world right now? These are all ways you could get your idea to pique an editor’s interest. 

I would write to a couple of your favorite niche outlets with one or two ideas (I’d go for quality over quantity, you really only need a single good idea) and see if anyone responds. And if nobody does, I would try smaller organizations next. In the videogame sphere, a good example would be that you’d pitch to, instead of Polygon, someplace like Rock Paper Shotgun. They’re actually a great place for this because their contributor guidelines (always read those first) say that you don’t need to have published work to pitch to them, just an example of prior writing.

3) Find Experts To Guide Your Niche Reporting

If you look at my career over the last ten years, it looks like I’ve covered a huge variety of topics. But actually, those topics all occurred in clumps. I’d be assigned a beat and I’d immerse myself in it. For example, when I was at ReadWrite, my editor came to me and said, “Lauren, I want you to become our Pinterest expert.” So I did. I signed up for an account when they went live, I went to their headquarters, I followed a lot of Pinterest influencers and kept tabs on them. This also happened with robots and smart homes at different times. 

These days, my beats are informed by my own interests. I write about anime and Magic: The Gathering for Forbes because I like that stuff and already know a lot of background. But any time I’m entering into something I know nothing about, I do a lot of research. For example, when I wrote about quantum computing, I first found and interviewed a quantum physicist. Look for guides in a new beat: people who know the topic way better than you do and can keep you from looking stupid. I don’t want to make insiders roll their eyes at something I write the same way I roll my eyes whenever a reporter writes “Sailor Moon: The Anime Nobody Has Heard Of.”

4) You Can Skip The Unpaid Work Step

Let’s talk about privilege for a moment. My parents paid for me to go to college, and my grandmother paid for me to go to grad school. (I also had scholarships for both but they would not have paid for all of my tuition, my books, etc.) This gave me more choices than the average student. So when I wanted to intern at Kotaku for no money, that was an option. When I wanted to intern at the Newseum for no money, I could do that. Kotaku, in particular, was huge for helping me build contacts in the games/pop culture writing space. But the world has changed. The Newseum closed and Kotaku now pays their interns. It used to be that you would “pay your dues” by working for free, but now that’s just called “being taken advantage of.”

Today, I suggest jumping right into freelance work instead of interning. Even though freelance gigs are frequently one-time, you can turn that into recurring work if you deliver good, consistent writing. And even if not, you can get big publication names in your portfolio. 

5) Never Stop Learning

I’ve always been interested in web design since middle school, though it started as a hobby. Then, when I got my Master’s in Journalism, technical training was a required part of the coursework. Even back then there was an understanding that journalism alone wasn’t going to pay the bills in the future, and journalists needed to be well-rounded. Of course you don’t need to go to grad school for this. You can use Lynda.com (I have a free membership with my library card and you might, too). One suggestion for honing your skills might be to set a productive goal: you could build your own website and use YouTube videos to help you along the way.

Over the years, I’ve worked on improving my skills whenever my justification for doing something a certain way was “This is how I’ve always done it.” That’s a bad reason. That’s when it’s time to start with a Google search and see how people are, for example, doing web security audits these days, and see if I need to get with the times. 

Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash

At the beginning of the global pandemic and resulting quarantine, some of my friends recommended that I post some tips for those who are newly working from home. I started a few drafts before scrapping the effort: in no way does quarantine resemble my old work-from-home routine. All of my old tips, like getting out of the house once a day, or making time to socialize during the evenings to make up for solitary work days, do not apply!

I never could have guessed my 2020 would look this way even a year ago. Not only am I adjusting to balancing my work with taking care of a tiny human, but now I’m doing it in isolation, too. I don’t have any tips because this is a brand new experience for me. But what I can do is share how it’s going. Spoiler alert: this work/life balance doesn’t have a lot of work in the equation. 

Here’s my daily schedule. Feel free to take a glimpse into my life in order to relate or feel better about how you’re handling quarantine or both.

Morning

Our wakeup call is fully dependent on Eva. When she gets up, either John or I get up with her, usually whoever had the better night. I eat while she plays with her toys, and then I put her in the high chair where theoretically she eats, but mostly she just plays with her food.

During Eva’s morning nap, I have to act fast. I can get either one article written or a couple of emails answered. If she wakes up in the middle of a task and John isn’t too busy, he gets her while I wrap up. Having John home is an enormous privilege. Because of him, I can take a Japanese class over Zoom every Monday while he parents Eva. The silver lining is that he’s getting to see more of her growth than he did previously. While he was at the office, I was the only one who was there for her first smile, her first roll. Now he’s home for every new milestone. 

Afternoon

I cook lunch and prepare baby food for Eva. Afterward, we play or FaceTime her grandparents, which is the closest I get to having childcare. She and I usually go for a walk around then to get out of the house, and then I put her down for her afternoon nap. 

This is when I try to get household tasks done. Every day, I do the dishes (because we’re eating at home every meal), and almost every day, I do a load of laundry (because baby). I may also clean, order groceries, prep for dinner, or puree more baby food. At this point, I might be asking, “what does your husband do?” and the answer is, “what he can.” He has to work minimum eight-hour days and manage a team. I know this is upsettingly consistent with reports of how quarantine tasks have broken down by gender. But for our family it’s a financially-based decision, especially considering I was working part-time to begin with. 

Since it’s so heavy on housework, my afternoons least resemble my old life. Even before the pandemic, with a younger baby, I didn’t do this many chores: I’d be able to visit my parents, or my mother-in-law would come to visit, or I’d go out to events like storytime and swim class and hang out with other parents so it didn’t feel like such a slog. I agree with this article about how weirdly, parenthood has made quarantine better, not worse, because it gives structure and purpose to my day. But it’s still a lot of work with no end in sight. 

Evening

After dinner, John and I put Eva to bed, an elaborate routine that involves video-chatting her other grandparents, taking a bath, and reading at least two books. It’s all finished by 7:30. 

Then it’s time for work!… if I’m not entirely burned out. Then I just pour myself a drink and play Animal Crossing. But let’s say it’s a good evening and I crack open my laptop. I’ll usually work for around two or three hours on articles for Forbes, Anime News Network, and Gunpla 101. The structure of my career has changed—like many freelancers, I’ve lost some income sources during the pandemic as some previous employers have tightened their belts. On the other hand, my affiliate marketing blog revenue has skyrocketed; as more people stay home and shop online, I’m making an ever-larger cut. Another bonus: many of my prior web design clients are rehiring me for feature requests and security updates since a WFH world means their portfolio websites are more important than ever. In a three-hour workday, it’s made me reevaluate the most practical ways to spend my work hours. But once again, this is on a good day. I have stressed-baked many batches of cookies in the evenings, too. 

What’s not on this schedule: thinking about the big picture. Instead, I’m even more task-oriented than usual, using the normally ill-advised strategy of using my email inbox as a to-do list. That’s great for putting out fires as they come up, but terrible for planning ahead. I’m taking this quarantine one day at a time, because to think about what’s likely ahead of me is just too demoralizing. Of course, who really knows what the future holds—these are unprecedented times. So even if I don’t feel like the Otaku Journalist right now, it’s OK to just write what I can, even something simple like this post. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. 

Top photo: One of the aforementioned stress-bakes. 

It’s been a while since I’ve written, but to me, it has felt like no time at all. Having a baby has really skewed my sense of the passage of time. Even as I readjust and things get easier, the sense that linear time remains warped has remained.

First, I was on maternity leave. Let me tell you what it was like to be away from work for two months after ten years of defining myself by it. Having a baby has been particularly weird because it’s one of the few socially accepted practices under capitalism that does not improve one’s work productivity. I use an app called RescueTime to track my online productivity, and just look at the nosedive I took in October—it’s basically all Netflix! In two months of leave, I worked on my laptop maybe once or twice. Even after I returned to work, at least partially, I continue to do most of my writing on my phone. A lot of this work will never see the light of day. I started keeping a journal because constantly caring for a baby can do a number on your memory. Aside from wanting to keep it to myself due to my privacy concerns, it’s also a bit less articulate than what you’d usually see from me.

Now it’s February and I still am not back to normal. I think what “normal” is has changed forever. Before I had Eva I was focused on getting back to normal as soon as possible. That’s why I wanted to take off only two months, having no idea how I would feel afterward. I knew I wanted to be more than a mom. But I didn’t realize how much of my time I would want to spend just being a mom, and it turns out the answer is a lot. It’s amazing how everything else has felt like background noise compared to Eva and her wants and needs. I imagine a lot of this is a hormonal surge designed to keep me from leaving her on the ground to be eaten by wild animals. There have been times I’ve prioritized work over John even. It’s weird to have something more important than my work. 

My schedule changed hugely in early January when Eva started sleeping through the night in her own room. After her 7:30 bedtime, I’d have a guaranteed two hours of productivity, enough time for one or maybe two writing assignments plus email catch-up, administration, and billing. But during the day, I’ve been getting less done than ever. Eva’s stomach is bigger so she nurses less often, meaning I spend less time writing on my phone the way I detailed in my Anime Feminist essay about breastfeeding. She’s more active and less content to play quietly with toys while I work on my computer, so our days are filled with stroller rides, playdates, storytime at the library, baby yoga at the community center and all the basic mom stuff I never thought I’d do because I didn’t realize yet how even boring things are fun when I do them with her. 

Eva is infinitely interesting. Seeing life through the eyes of a baby makes the ordinary fascinating. For example, it’s amazing how much John and I, two Christmas curmudgeons due to our birthdays occurring Christmas week, got into the spirit this season. It’s amazing how, after years of ignoring much of what DC has to offer as “tourist stuff,” we’re carting Eva around museums just to see her expression, raptly focused and observant whenever she sees something for the first time, which is a lot of the time!

I’ve been reading about matrescence, a time of metamorphosis when a parent, usually the one who gave birth, undergoes a dramatic identity shift after having a child. I still introduce myself as a freelance writer to other parents (the only type of people I seem to meet these days), but it feels less fitting now that I’m essentially a stay-at-home mom with a side gig. After years of defining myself through the work I do and the hobbies I cultivate, who am I once the way I spend my days has changed so much? My life feels like a pie dish without enough room for all the slices I want to fit in it. And still, I’m coming from a place of incredible privilege and I know that. I’m lucky to have an active co-parent in John and to be in a position where I don’t have to work a lot if I feel overwhelmed. I’m lucky to have understanding clients and flexible deadlines. I know this is unrealistic for so many which is why accessible childcare and resolving income inequality are my two most strongly held convictions going into the 2020 election season.

Every day, Eva does something that I’ve never seen her do before. It reminds me that both she and I are going through a period of enormous change. She won’t always need me this much, and that’s why I’m seizing any spare moment to keep up my career. I’m not back to work as much as I thought I’d be at this point, but I haven’t given up the effort. Watch this space. 

Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash

This year, I don’t have any big plans for New Year’s Eve. I’ve been heading to bed when Eva does, around 7 PM, and I don’t think I could stay up until midnight if I wanted! 

Even so, I’ll be continuing one of my New Year’s rituals. In both 2017 and 2018, I dedicated the final post of Otaku Journalist of the year to helping me (and hopefully you) assess how the past 365 days have gone, and I did that this year, too. 

Below are nine questions I’ve been asking myself since 2017 as a way to summarize the year in review. Though it’s a personal exercise, I enjoy sharing it with my blog readers. I hope that my reflections encourage you to make your own. 

What made up your body of work this year? Which parts are you most proud of?

• I started working with a new client, Tubular. I get to use their fascinating social media tracking tools to write about viral video trends. My favorite article for them so far is Transgender Videos: Why Brands Should Join the Conversation. 
• Speaking to Syracuse University students about cosplay. The invitation came when I was right out of the hospital after having Eva and I felt less like a person with any knowledge worth sharing than a collection of sore body parts. Preparing for this talk gave me a chance to be more than a mom for the first time in nearly three months.
• The CBC radio interview I did about the Kyoto Animation fire despite still going through my own emotions. I’m proud of myself for getting through it. 
• Honestly, anything I wrote while 9 months pregnant was a major accomplishment over fatigue and nerves. Even when I’m up all night with Eva I’m not as tired as I was this summer, because at least my body feels comfortable and predictable again. I know I keep talking about this—having my kid was the most defining part of 2019 for me.

What were your top 5 moments of the year?

• Cosplaying as Kokichi at Magfest. 
• After a tough week of deadlines, taking an afternoon to get my favorite snacks from the Japanese market and having an impromptu cherry blossom viewing.
• Building my first Perfect Grade Gundam with John. 
• Seeing both of my sisters get married!
• Finally meeting Eva.

What are you really glad is over?

My pregnancy, but not for the reasons you’d think. At around six months along, I was diagnosed with an unusual complication called a velamentous insertion. It could be nothing, or it could result in a stillbirth. The uncertainty was maddening. 

Leading up to my due date, I had to go to the doctor twice a week for tests and ultrasounds to see what was going on in there. For my own sanity, I treated this like an annoying inconvenience. It wasn’t until after Eva was born at just five pounds eight ounces that we realized she really had been fighting for her life in there. Fortunately, all the danger is over now that she’s out, and we’re so happy to see her packing on the pounds.

How are you different today than you were 365 days ago?

I’m better at living in the moment now. I don’t worry as much about the past or the future. Eva needs me to be right here for her right now, and she’s made me match her pace.

It feels so typical, so basic, how I can’t stop talking about her. I never thought motherhood would change me but it has absolutely transformed my routine, my mindset, even my values. 

Is there anything you achieved that you forgot to celebrate?

I got promoted to Senior Contributor at Forbes. 

Though I’m on a hiatus from my studies, I graduated from Japanese 405. I started studying the language in 2014, so to go at it for five years felt like a major accomplishment. 

What have you changed your perspective on this year?

I used to be very uncomfortable asking others for help. Then I spent much of this year physically limited in one way or another, and got better at expressing what I needed. If I needed to stop and rest on a long walk, I said so. When a colleague offered me her granola bar during a work event (my hunger came in uncomfortably quickly during the first trimester), I accepted. In the weeks after Eva was born, I subsisted on meals friends and family cooked for me. Not so long ago this would have made me feel guilty and ashamed that I couldn’t take care of myself. But being in a vulnerable position has not only made me appreciate the kindness of others, but renewed my empathy for other people going through difficult times. 

Who are the people that really came through for you this year?

The dozens of doctors I saw throughout my pregnancy who vigilantly monitored my complication. Definitely not my insurance company, but for sure the many insurance phone representatives who took time out of their days to keep me from getting overbilled and, in several cases, bringing an incorrect $500+ bill down to $0. I think the more you go to the doctor, the more of a chance you have of getting billed incorrectly because it happened to me half a dozen times in 2019. 

What were some pieces of media that defined your year?

• Demon Slayer. Like everyone else on Earth, I got totally sucked in!
• Naruto. Somehow I never picked up this classic until 2019. I’m reading it on my Viz Media Shonen Jump app, which is the most-used app on my phone.
• I frequently had prenatal insomnia, and the positive part was that I read way more books than usual. My favorite piece of fiction was another classic: I, Robot by Issac Asimov. The best nonfiction I read was Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. These are both affiliate links so I can fund more book buying in 2020. 
• Does performance art count as media? I made an effort to go out more evenings this year since I knew I’d have to get a sitter after Eva got here. I ended up seeing several Japanese arts performed for the first time: kyudo (archery), a karuta demonstration, a koto performance, a Noh play. 

What will you be leaving behind in 2019?

Feeling completely out of my depth all the time. So much happened this year on my personal life it was often overwhelming. There was a birth, a death, and two weddings in my immediate family. With all of this going on, I did not do my best writing this year. But I think that working while undergoing these many changes made me more resilient. I don’t need to spend as much time preparing to write. I don’t even need my laptop—I wrote most of this post with my thumb, on my phone at odd hours of the night, while holding a baby. I’m better at snatching spare moments to write and better at avoiding procrastination; because by the time I’m done procrastinating I might be busy with a baby. Freed from these prior self-constraints around writing devices, work hours, and standard routine, I think 2020 could be my wordiest year yet. 

If you decide to do a similar exercise to this one, let me know! I’d love to read it.

Lead photo by Andreas Dress on Unsplash.