Lemon water, Living room
Life, stillness and a burnt-out PhD student's tentative steps into a new era
Hello! Before we get into this, I suppose I should begin by introducing myself. My name is Jenessa Williams (she/her), I am 30 years of age, and I am writing this from Leeds, UK, while I attempt to recover from what may have been the most momentous and exhausting six months (or rather, four years) of my adult life.
One month ago today, I submitted my PhD thesis for examination: 99,993 words exploring the ways in which music fans attempt to reconcile (or not) with artists who had been accused of sexual misconduct in the immediate aftermath of the #MeToo movement. Speaking to 57 fan participants and asking questions about cancel culture, online performativity pressures and social norms of misogyny within specific music genres and online forums, it was both the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, keeping me company throughout the pandemic and solidifying my desire to become a media & communications academic.
In the two months before I submitted this PhD, I also got married to my long-term partner (and honeymooned to NYC), turned the aforementioned 30, attended my second working Glastonbury, presented at two academic conferences, witnessed Queen Beyoncé in the flesh, wrote my first journal article and began tentative proposals on both my first book and first academic job applications. It has been a glorious, gratifying few months (and years) of milestones and happiness and bucket-list culmination, but also an incredibly intense one, juggling two careers and various life events while also trying to maintain some semblance of personal wellbeing.
As the kind of introvert who becomes extroverted in the name of pulling other introverts out of their shell, I absolutely love the rush of being a music journalist. I love the thrill of interviewing some of my favourite artists, burrowing inside their minds and figuring out how they managed to put their feelings to tape. I love the pace of unrolling a hot take into a lengthier argument, of trying to capture a zeitgeisty topic and being part of the conversation as it unfolds in online fan conversation. I really, really love running around a music festival or weaving through the crowd at a gig, trying to find the words to bottle the sense of communal excitement. But then I also love the slower consideration of academia, the time and space that can be afforded to delving so deep into data and literature that you end up with a book, or a journal article, or a way of sharing those ideas with a classroom of students who light up with their own theories and perspectives and connections. I am passionate about the possibilities of being both an exciting music journalist and an engaging teacher-researcher, bridging the gaps between theory and practice. I am, as contemporary feminist parlance would have it, determined to believe that professionally speaking, I can be the girl - woman - who truly does both.
I am also pretty tired. Anyone who knows me well will know that I’m a five-year plan kind of person (see also ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five). I journal daily, and firmly subscribe to the Pinterest/Trello/Hard-Copy Calendar. I am the textbook definition of those TikToks that do the rounds asking their partner how they would react in impossible (and increasingly ridiculous) hypothetical scenarios. I am, to put it lightly, notoriously terrible at taking breaks or ‘going with the flow’ to see how life pans out. But in limbo of waiting for my PhD viva, I’m trying to force myself to take a beat, to figure out what feels good in the moment as well as what feels smart for the future. I am trying to enjoy the slower pace of a to-do list that is three items long and gets ticked off by 2 pm without any further additions, or of a coffee date that sprawls beyond the 60 minutes of a disciplined lunch hour. I am actively trying to bring down my perpetually-high cortisol levels, which means spending more time in silence doing yoga, or alone on the sofa in my living room, reading and drinking lemon water (with Hayley Williams’ song dutifully playing on loop in my head). I am trying to take naps and eat well and empty my brain because I know that is how fresh bursts of creativity occur,but I’m also battling against the tiny voice of creative competitiveness which plagues both freelancers and academics, always having to ask themselves the important yet often-unhelpful question: ‘what’s next, and how quickly can I get there so that I can prove I am relevant and still exist?’
Trying to recover from burnout as an anxious person and chronic overachiever is not an easy journey. It’s incredibly difficult in modern society to avoid the eternal churn of comparison or FOMO when it comes to maintaining a creative career. But when I can’t completely rest, I’m at least trying to make headway on some of the projects that feel as if they are just for me. One of them was to start this Substack. I'm not really sure exactly what it will look like yet, but in the tumultuous climate of both journalism and academia (and the wider binscape of social media) it seems pretty sensible these days to have a place to call your own. As a ‘93 baby, I’ve missed the kind of lengthy, chaotic writing that used to take place on blogger and MySpace and Tumblr, the late-night stuff that borders on oversharing and ‘oh god, maybe I should delete that’ embarrassment. I wanted room to share my CV clippings and professional happenings, but also to ramble about all the things that I love but don’t necessarily want to turn into work: K-Pop, contemporary fiction, exhibitions, casual gig reviews, fleeting thoughts on internet culture and fandom and gender and race.
In time, I also wanted to make a space where I could learn from other people, and speak to them about how they navigate this mess of multi-hyphenate careers and ‘hustle’ culture, all while trying to put some good work out into the world. I’m not necessarily envisaging that this will become a careers newsletter per se, but I do think there is room for a little more transparency about the experience of navigating early-career academia and/or early careers in the arts industries. I’m hoping that this space might grow in some ways to answer that, or at very least give space for conversations with other people who do cool stuff and don’t mind sharing why (and how) they do it.
As indicated in its somewhat clunky working title, Aca.Journo.Fangirl.Other potentially risks something in not just choosing one lane. But there is a thrill in keeping your options open, in knowing that amongst these much-needed periods of rest and stillness, there is something so exciting about keeping the car running. If you’ve read this far, consider yourself a welcome passenger: this period of unknowing makes me very very nervous, but it’s also the headspace from which fun new things will hopefully be born.
This month I’ve been:
Listening To:
Slowly but surely, I have been spreading the gospel of K-Pop around my immediate friendship circle. NewJeans have obviously continued to do zero wrong with SuperShy, but I also really love Ateez’s Bouncy, the perfect foil to Le Serrafim’s recent badass cowgirl aesthetic. Elsewhere, the new track by Jamila Woods - Tiny Garden - feels like it has arrived in my life at exactly the right time, a perfectly soothing ode to rebuilding yourself one small step at a time.
Watching:
Time off means finding new shows with a zillion episodes to gorge on without thinking too much. Somehow I had never seen Grey’s Anatomy before (gasp), and it’s a lot gorier than I was expecting, but there’s something strangely comforting in the repetitive formula of it’s hospital comings and goings.
Like everyone else, I also watched Barbie, which I liked a lot but maybe didn’t fully love. The levels of hype were incredibly high, and I think my judgement was probably a little bit clouded by unrealistic expectations of its feminist stakes. That’s totally on me though; for the visual aesthetics alone, it’s a real treat.
Reading:
Speaking of hype, curiosity got the better of me, and I finally got hold of a copy of TikTik sensation Colleen Hoover’s ‘It Ends With Us’. Right as I was about to start drafting furious tweets about today’s teens being pedalled their own version of toxic Twilight-esque love-bombing under the guise of romance, it took a very heavy turn and became something quite unflinching, and sadly necessary. Definitely one for the more adult end of YA readers, but I’ll be intrigued to see how it gets adapted for film.
Writing:
As somewhere that so excellently demonstrates the connections between journalism and academia, I always love writing for The Conversation. It’s not quite been published yet, but this month I got to share some thoughts on the new BTS biography, and how it both celebrates K-Pop and offers up exciting new innovations for music literature.
I also reviewed the new Sophie May EP for NME, and the extremely fun new Girl Ray album - Prestige - for the Guardian. I only got gently mansplained in the comments this time too, which is always a nice treat.