Welcome! I’m happy to have you here. I figured it was only necessary to begin with a little hello, hi, how are you post and give you some backstory of where this idea came from and why I’m doing it.
Before going further, I must give credit to one of my best friends in and offline Amanda Howell for the name idea. I can write all day long. I can make funny videos on TikTok. I can handle all of those things that come with content creation, but when I’m trying to put a name to something, I go blank. That’s just not my creative genius. We’ve already worked out it that I’ll send her a $2.38 check for commission, we’re good.
I have always wanted to be a writer in some form. As a child I wrote fiction essays that were obviously going to become a novel at some point (spoiler they didn’t). I wrote philosophy papers as a prelaw / political science major (spoiler number 2 I dropped out). Of course I gravitated to blogging and dabbled there a bit, but it still didn’t feel right. I would get bored with the topic and writer’s block became a real thing so then I’d just give up on it. Recently my sister asked me “if you hadn’t gone to college for prelaw, what would you have gone for and do you think you would’ve stayed?” I responded “journalism & absolutely would’ve stayed” without even having to think about it. I think that was always there somewhere inside of me, but I didn’t go after it. Fast forward to today there’s the idea that journalism is “dead”. I don’t believe that. I believe we are evolving into different spaces of journalism. People may not picking up a magazine or a newspaper, but they are going to their favorite sites & social medias for those hot articles. You may not be reading blogs regularly, but enjoy having something in your inbox that gives you some entertainment. We are evolving and journalism is evolving.
But why gossip you ask? Well that’s my “one thing”. That’s my thing that I go looking for to give me a break during the day or to feed the dopamine hit of the mindless scroll. I check TMZ, The Daily Mail and my favorite Instagram accounts that do more than just slap headlines on a story. Enter the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial and I become fully consumed by what is happening in that courtroom. So many sides and stories and twists and turns to look at. I started sharing my thoughts and opinions on Instagram. I was doing Q&A’s answering questions for those that want to keep up but maybe don’t have the ability to zone out for days and weeks on end as I have. There’s only so much that I can share without my fingers cramping on an Instagram story slide. There’s also a lot of censoring that happens on Instagram. If the algorithm sees you using words that they don’t “like” they’re going to shadow ban your account. I didn’t want that. I wanted a place where I could share more and dive more deeply & freely.
This is my own personal evolution of “journalism”. disclaimer: I am not a journalist, don’t come for me.. it’s just the vibe for this article
Settle in. This is going to be fun and I hope that you get as much enjoyment out of reading these articles in your inbox as I do creating them for you.