Coming back to writing on this blog after a few months’ unplanned hiatus to make a statement: I want to blog more, and post on social media less. So consider this article a manifesto for writing lovers in the age of content, to keep myself accountable and explain where I’m coming from.
Writing, creativity and unemployment
So here I am, back on the blog. Taking a break from my writing on it wasn’t planned, it just… happened. If you’ve been following me for a while you know how prolific I used to be: three blog posts per week, plus social media posts, plus academic work and even a newsletter and… well… I just don’t have the headspace for that anymore. You will have probably noticed that I don’t post on my Instagram or TikTok grids daily anymore, that my newsletter about my life went from a very full monthly thing to a more sporadic quarterly drop, and that I’ve been struggling to keep up even with the monthly blogging that I used to say I wanted to stick to.
You may be thinking: “Girl, what happened?”
I got burnt out is what happened.
The previous job that I loved so much was always going to be fixed-term, and it got extended as much as it could before the centre I was part of wrapped up, but I’m on the academic job market again – and this time it’s more soul-destroying than the last.
When I waited a year and a half to find a job after my PhD I was relatively green, with just a few publications in my curriculum, and I needed to make my name in academia. Sure, I was coming from a previous burnout in PR, and I had been working four to two jobs (in between temping, lecturing and teaching pole dance) during my PhD, but I was excited about what was next.
In the last few years of my postdoc I did absolutely everything I could on top of my workload to make myself employable, but in the current market, where student numbers dwindle because of Brexit, universities merge and funding is reduced, everyone and their mother is applying for the few roles available. So I burnt myself out again – to the point that my former boss told me to stop doing “just one more thing,” because my CV was already good enough – while also having to look for jobs.
For those of you who are not familiar with permanent (and sometimes temporary) academic job and funding applications, they often involve tailoring your CV and cover letter to a role and department to a T, and often coming up with pages of research plans or teaching programs… only to be rejected with a standard email months later, with zero feedback.
Academic writing itself isn’t always conducive to creativity, either. As much as I try to make the language I use in papers more accessible, the processes that are necessary for rigour can also be quite narrow (see: citing bibliography all the time, having specific sections and word counts to follow, etc.) and creatively stifling if that’s the main writing you do, and if you publish as much as I have done.
So as you can imagine, I’ve already been writing a lot, with the annexed emotional load of wanting economic stability and imagining myself in a role which seems nowhere to be seen. This means picking up my laptop or phone for even one more minute felt like a chore, and wasn’t necessarily helping me write creatively.
Top all of this with social media fatigue brought by livestreamed genocides and other horrors carried out with impunity while everyone is trying to sell you something (including extreme far-right ideologies), and with a fairly fulfilling personal and romantic life that takes me away from my laptop and… well… the idea of coming back to writing long-form content has made me feel like this about doing more tech-related work:
Sadly, this now also includes writing, because as much as I love jotting things down on a notepad and writing as a personal diary, I also do love sharing my thoughts with the world and that… has a tech dimension. Which in the age of technofascism, where everything is mediated through a tech bro’s app or website, isn’t really ideal.
Vulnerability and the academy
An additional roadblock to writing, shall we say, “from the heart” came from fears about vulnerability, self-presentation and the academy.
Fears of looking “unprofessional” while being on the job market kept me up at night, made me revisit my social media posts, and essentially stopped me from being as honest and publicly emotional as I’d like given that I find writing cathartic and creatively uplifting – something I partially addressed in my “Doing Both” blog post last year, when most of this was going on. It’s not like I have to post videos of myself crying on social media to feel creatively fulfilled, or overshare everything in my life, but I love the sheer mess that comes from good writing, because it’s relatable for those who think I’m some sort of productivity bot and it’s also a form of channelling my energy into a form of release.
However, as someone who already has her ass out on the internet, looking for jobs that involve teaching while simultaneously trying to appeal to mainstream publishers with a book proposal has meant overthinking how much I can share. “Do we want this bitch to teach young adults?” and “Is she appealing enough for the mainstream market?” were always at the centre of my mind, and cost me quite a few brand deals and sleepless nights for fear of not presenting myself correctly to a professional audience.
Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t want to work somewhere where colleagues or bosses told me to cover up, and I wouldn’t want to work with a publisher who didn’t approve of or get my approach to life. But I’ve realised how many constraints I’ve racked up by being a pole dancing academic who engages in critical scholarship to hold social media platforms to account… while also being a content creator who gets paid via those platforms, and already looks “messy” to the average employer.
I’ve realised things I say may come back to bite me – including my writing. I’ve realised that every choice I make can cause future challenges and put up more roadblocks, ironically leading me to act like the platforms I critique: in the past few years, I ended up applying a “World Risk Society” logic to anticipate every possible risk in the way I act, speak, write. And it’s been paralysing, and creatively stunting.
The pressure to “enjoy” my time off work hasn’t helped.
I thought I’d do so much more than apply for jobs when unemployed, making sure I’d harnessed the time spent not checking emails to do something I liked. I thought it’d be the time I finally performed more frequently, wrote more, met more friends, tried new things, and so on. But I didn’t, and I initially felt “left behind” about it, watching my friends apparently live their best lives online.
Yet, as I discussed with some friends in Brazil, I am in a softer era and I actually feel like being kind to myself instead of adding more things to my plate that I don’t have the energy for. This feels important, and yet somehow a different version of me that I’m struggling to get used to.
Writing in the age of content: a manifesto (maybe)
So what changed?
Well – being actually unemployed (so not having to search for jobs on top of having a full-time job) has marginally helped create some space in my brain for different writing styles. So did a solo trip to Brazil (more on that later this month). And although job applications are still a full-time job, writing a book proposal that both my literary agent and I are happy with helped release and free up a lot of mental energy, get my creative juices flowing and give me something that feels like a good product of all the years I’ve spent observing and fighting with technology.
The semblance of a writing mojo appearing again is not all down to me though.
I have felt really inspired by pieces that blended journalistic and opinion-led writing about day-to-day issues that went viral and essentially made writing cool and thought-provoking again: I’m thinking of Chanté Joseph’s viral Vogue piece about why having a boyfriend is embarrassing now, and Ellen Atlanta’s article on why Botox is the next frontier of calling women hysterical. Both pieces were too nuanced to be reduced to a mere social media posts, and yet they were published anyway, reminding me why true conversations can only be had offline, and not squeezed in a one-minute reel.
New music releases also really helped – and if you think I’m talking about Taylor Swift’s abysmal The Life of a Showgirl, I’m gonna stop you right there.
Three albums that are saying the things we usually keep quiet out loud made me feel like I wanted to feel vulnerable again, because it’s in the soft, broken times that I have used my brain and my heart the most. Listening to Lily Allen’s impossibly and rivetingly messy West End Girl, to Florence + The Machine’s (literally) gut-wrenching and enraging Everybody Scream and to Rosalia’s religious multi-lingual feat Lux has provided a soundtrack not just to my flop era, but also to my renewed need to put it in writing. My job search doesn’t seem to be producing any results whether I’m messy or not, so I may as well go for it!
Although, actually, Swift’s album did help me rethink my approach to writing and producing in a different way: it made me realise who I don’t want to be and how I want to stop engaging with the world.
As I argued in a recent reel (below), we are literally drowning in content, a lot of which is AI slop, and artists themselves are finding themselves having to constantly release music to stay on top of streaming and social media algorithms. Inevitably, that doesn’t lead to good art – so I want to reclaim a time when social media were a support, and not a hindrance, to my writing.
I have always struggled to define myself as an influencer or content creator, not because there’s anything wrong with either practice, but because I’m a blogging girlie first, and a content creator last. Content feels ubiquitous. Yet, when we create to feed a beast (aka the algorithm) and try to fit however we feel, think, behave into a box that is dictated by technofascism, we don’t always produce something real.
Last year I discussed my social media use in therapy, vocalising how being in a healthy, stable and safe relationship for the first time in my adult life made me reconsider my presence on platforms. Once useful and inspiring, social media now suck you in with sales and depression and to prompt you to produce more, when my relationship’s quiet softness, and the previously never-experienced “calm love” I now feel made me want to stay online less and live more.
This is partly in response to my research findings and experience, and general awareness of platforms’ business model consisting in hogging our time on their apps. Instagram and TikTok in particular want to keep you on their platforms for purchases, news, conversations because the more you use them, the more they learn from you – and the more they can sell you. It’s no wonder that, although they don’t allow adult content, they even ban links to platforms where adult content can be sold – it’s almost as if they’re saying: “Either you make money through me, or you’re done.”
My choice to spend more time writing isn’t just rational and scientific. Many of us are entering what Pam Briggs and I called “post-social media” in one of our recent papers, but the combined experiences I shared are making me want to set intentions here, so that you can hold me accountable.
When even what is supposedly art (see: music and albums) becomes content, I want to separate myself and protest against the algorithm’s hamster wheel, and retreat.
I wouldn’t go as far as calling my blogging art, but my thoughts are more than content.
I used to post on social media to uplift, share and broaden the appeal of my writing, but the algorithm has sucked me in so much that posting long captions in lieu of a more nuanced, honest written take on a website has become all the writing I do.
Well, fuck that.
I will continue to post on social media for money and as a personal diary, but tech bros won’t get my passion for long-form writing – and neither will you, unless you come back here.
You read it here first.
Pin this post
