January 2, 2019 (1437 words)
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A highly curated summary of things that happened to me in 2018.
Tags: personal, immigration, writing
This post is day 2 of a personal challenge to write every day in 2019. See the other fragments, or sign up for my weekly newsletter.
2018 has been quite an eventful year for me.
Some things were good: I had my first articles in print publications (New Internationalist, Logic Magazine, and Tribune); completed my masters degree with a distinction (! still don’t know how I managed that); signed a book deal with Repeater. I also did a lot of public speaking, for podcasts as well as in-person events. Plus, I started a Jacobin reading group (technically a leftist speaker series) that began with just a few masters students at LSE but has since expanded to 100+ people in total over 30+ sessions (with usually 15-20 per session). So in some ways, this year was amazing.
Some things were a little more complicated. Halfway through the year, I split up with my partner of 4+ years. It was about as amicable as one could hope for given the circumstances, but it was logistically ungainly, not least because we had been living together for the past 4 years and had, in that time, accumulated many joint possessions (mostly books, which you may have seen me tweeting about). Not to mention joint bills, a shared bank account, combined subscriptions to left publications, etc.
Even worse: I had initially moved to the UK purely so that we could stay together. I had always wanted to live in the US, but we couldn’t really make that work for immigration reasons, and neither of us wanted to stay in Canada, so moving to the UK together seemed like the best option. He was a UK citizen, and I could easily get a non-renewable 2-year work/study visa, as a Canadian citizen; our plan was to get married sometime in year 2 so I could get apply for permanent residency that way.
That plan got derailed, for obvious reasons. I still wanted to stay in the UK, but I could no longer find an immigration pathway that would work for my personal situation (i.e., being self-employed and also not being a millionaire). So I spent some time this summer wallowing in self-indulgent misery as I tried to figure out what hell I was going to do (which you may also have seen me tweeting about).
I still haven’t entirely solved that problem, but I did hear about a Tier 1 visa that has some potential. I’m not positive that I’d qualify, but at least it’s another option. I’ll probably revisit that in a month or two, if nothing better comes up. In the meantime, I’ll be spending some time outside the UK to get some sun while I reflect on my life choices. I kindly request that no one gives me advice about immigration unless they have personally had to deal with the Home Office in a similar capacity in the last 5 years (I’m just a little sick of people saying things like “just get a job!” or “just get married!” as if it were that easy).
The rest of this blog post is just lists of things I’ve consumed or produced this year.
Things I consumed
Publications
- n+1: I first heard about n+1 in 2015, through Anna Wiener’s fictional piece Uncanny Valley, a truly gorgeous piece on what it’s like to work in tech, and one that made me want to start writing, too. I’ve been a print subscriber for the last two years, and I recently bought a bunch of back issues as well. One of my go-tos when I want to read a left publication with a literary bent.
- The Point: Similar to n+1, though less overtly political.
- The Baffler: Always a good source of left takes, especially on tech.
- The New Inquiry: Electronic only. Doesn’t publish as regularly as I’d like.
- Dissent: I’ve been subscribing for a while, but I haven’t actually read any print issues yet (the content is mostly centred around US politics).
- Jacobin: this publication is a major reason for me being on the left in the first place. I don’t agree with everything they publish, and in some ways I feel like I’ve outgrown it, but I think it’s an important part of the media ecosystem so I’m happy to support them with a subscription (even if I don’t really read the issues anymore).
- Catalyst: the academic journal of Jacobin. Has some good articles, but they’re usually a little too academic for my liking.
- New Left Review: also on the academic side, but I’ve found them to be generally worth reading. I started subscribing in 2017 and I also bought a ton of old issues from Housman’s (they had a huge clear-out sale where you could buy 4 issues for £1). So I now own probably 30-40 issues, which is maybe a little excessive, but it looks nice on my bookshelf, so.
- Tribune: UK-based political publication, mostly focused on the Labour Party. I subscribed mostly because I have an article in the first issue. There’s a lot of UK-specific stuff that goes over my head, though.
- Salvage: Left/literary publication with a pessimistic slant. I’m not a subscriber, but I’ve bought all the back issues that are still in print, and I’m generally a huge fan of the publication. I don’t know that much about its backstory - it feels like it’s part of a tradition on the left that I don’t quite understand - but I read the two most recent issues and found some of the articles to be absolutely captivating. Richard Seymour and China Miéville are particular favourites of mine. The poetry, I could do without.
- Fireside Fiction: Short stories and poems. I only just started subscribing, and I don’t know much about them, but their submissions page explicitly excludes fascist fiction which seems kind of cool? I kind of want to start writing fiction, so I figured I should be reading more.
- Bookforum: Literary publication, I think. Only just subscribed to this, too. Maybe this will help me write a book, idk.
- Red Pepper: UK-based left magzine. I’m not actually a subscriber, but I have a copy of the TWT issue, and I’m a big fan of the aesthetics of their relaunched print publication.
- Logic Magazine: Really excellent tech publication with a (sometimes subtle) left bent. I’m not subscribed because they only ship to the US, but I have a copy of Issue 5: Failure (to which I contributed an article on open source).
- Protean Magazine: A new left/literary publication that I randomly found on Twitter, which I backed on Kickstarter. Their first print issue hasn’t shipped yet, but their website looks great and I’m pretty excited.
Books
According to Goodreads, I read 50 books! Way fewer than last year, but not that bad, in hindsight. My faves:
- The Dispossessed, by Ursula K Le Guin
- K-Punk, by Mark Fisher
- The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin
Podcasts
I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts this year, but if I had to pick my top three, it would be:
- Politics Theory Other
- General Intellect Unit (tech/left content)
- NovaraFM with James Butler (left politics + theory + culture; James is enviously eloquent and also has a very soothing voice)
Things I produced
- 9 podcast appearances on 8 different podcasts (full list here)
- various articles for New Socialist, Notes From Below, LSE Review of Books, Novara Media, New Internationalist, Logic Magazine and Tribune (full list here)
- websites for 3 different left orgs (New Socialist, Notes From Below, The World Transformed)
- the aforementioned Jacobin reading group (details here)
Bonus: Plans for 2019
My main goal this year is to finish my book, hopefully by this summer. I have no clue how to actually go about writing a book of this nature so I’m really hoping that this blog post exercise will help.
I’m also working on starting a new publication dedicated solely to tech worker organising, because this feels like a hugely important frontier that would be perfectly suited to my interests. I’ve been spending more time in the Bay Area this year, and have been talking to lefties who work at tech companies and are trying to organise, which is really inspiring and making me want to go all in on this. Progress has been slow, but I want to at least have a website up before the end of this quarter. If this is something you’re interested in knowing more about, or you want to collaborate in some way, get in touch!