a new term (january 19, 2025)
This week I don't have a substantive blog post, mainly since all of my writing energies are focused on trying to revise a paper for publication. I can see a pathway for it to be accepted, but the paper itself needs quite a bit of work to get there. And I've been procrastinating like no other on actually getting the writing done.
Perhaps procrastinating is the wrong term to use here. It's more like a pure avoidance — a fear, an anxiety — of facing the paper: the ideas it involves, the words on the page. Two weeks ago I would have said that it's a symptom of not having written in a while, but that's what I essentially spent the beginning of the year doing — re-exercising this muscle so that I can take on this milestone right when I need to. Except, it's now time for me to write, and... I haven't done it.
I do think I've built a good amount of momentum this past week, with journaling more and with thoughtfully committing to reading/writing for my courses this term. So really, all that's left is to take the first step and start looking at that paper... but perhaps I need to get some thoughts out of the way first.
Tomorrow is the start of a new term. Not in terms of the academic semester, but in terms of the US political administration. I'm already extremely worried for it. I think it's easy to be a doomer at this moment and think that everything is bad and that there is no hope, but I'm reminded by those around me that this isn't a particularly productive mindset to have. But honestly, sometimes I don't want to be productive. I don't want to live just to produce things. I want to just be able to live.
But OK, I'm just splitting hairs here. Even if I don't want to be productive, this doomer mindset still isn't a particularly helpful one to have. I still have hope, and I want to imagine better.
It's funny, this week's reading for my class is about speculative fiction and radical imaginaries. For some reason, I feel nauseated when I think about fictions at a time like this, even though I know they're a vehicle for us to imagine better. But I just can't help but feel like I don't have the energy (or patience?) for fictitious worlds. I have ideas for this world, and maybe I don't want to think about it in terms of a fiction.
One of the things at the top of my mind—unfortunately—is the banning and re-instating of TikTok this past weekend. I don't think any of us seriously thought that TikTok was going to be permanently banned, but the publicity stunt played out far more blatantly and pathetically(?) that I imagined. The fact that they kept telegraphing their reverence for Donald Trump, and the fact that they thanked him for bringing the platform back before he even took office... like, it's clear this whole thing has just been a ruse to (a) curry favor with him, and (b) make him look better to the public. It's so frustrating. Sure, we can talk about this as "just another social media app," but I place a lot more value on social media platforms than most. And that's kind of why I said this was unfortunate—I can't seem to escape thinking about tech, no matter how hard I try.
But it's not just a platform where you scroll videos, waste time, and share memes. It shapes our material, social, and ideological realities. For better or for worse, social media platforms do still connect us together, and who owns that channel of communication controls what we know, what we believe, and what we can do. I'm not just talking about misinformation and disinformation (which plague Twitter/X already and will soon appear more readily on Facebook/Instagram with the removal of fact checking), but about how social media serves as a way to bring people together, to organize, to share ideas, to find joy. Perhaps I'm emphasizing the digital community aspect of it too much, but I've seen the incredible ways it's been able to help — both productively and not — and I think that's something that we should make better, not worse. I think it's a thing that we can make safer, and more inclusive, even if there's been a tremendous backsliding against equity and inclusion in recent years.
In a lot of ways we're back to where we were in 2016, though things this time around are slightly more bleak. And a lot of our friends, family, and community members didn't make it this far. I do think it is important to remember that we fought these battles before — and have continued to fight these battles — and not all hope is lost.
I've got so much I want to do in this new term.