Summer mood report: Transcendent
Summer mood report: Transcendent
Or: what I read, watched, and listened to so far this summer and why I haven't written a published article in three months. Also welcome to my newsletter, TRANSCENDENT.
Hi!
Thank you so much for visiting my newsletter. I’m really glad and grateful you’re here. I’ll cut to the chase: I’ve wanted to start a newsletter for a while now. By this point, I’ve started and stopped midway through probably a dozen first drafts of the first installment over the course of well over a year. I’ve toyed and circulated between a handful of newsletter concepts and edited my Welcome emails and About page so many times that I had to step away because it was teetering on unhealthy. I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to tinker with them down the road because I’m often overly conscious about how I present myself and my work (something to unpack in a future essay). But I’m also hoping this newsletter will grow and change as I grow and change as a person and writer. (:
The evolution of this newsletter so far has been kind of trippy, which you won’t be able to tell because all the work has been behind the scenes and I’ve never managed to be brave enough to publish and share anything from it. Until now! I’m finally ready to launch this baby out into the world and get it off its feet. I know I’ve given you basically nothing about what this newsletter actually is about (more on this later), but if what I’ve shared so far is enough to entice you and you’re ready to enter a deeply committed digital relationship with me where we will meet each other weekly-ish in your inbox (😙), please subscribe!
In An Alternate Universe 🌌
It’s nearing the end of summer and I’ve just come down from a few intense months personally and professionally. May and June were particularly busy months, work-wise. If I was still in the education profession and had become a high school teacher after graduating in 2021, I’d no doubt have spent this summer a little differently. I’d be somewhere in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, eating my fill in street food, perusing through nightlife culture with my cousins, and sweating my clothes off at my grandma’s house. Instead, I work a regular 9-6 marketing job (albeit remotely) so my summer has instead been spent ordering delivery food more than I should, scrolling through the social media of people who did travel to Vietnam, sneaking wistful peeks at the sky through my bedroom window/office while I work at my desk, and languishing in the Georgia summer heat at my home.
Who am I kidding? If I was still a teacher, I’d still probably not travel like I wanted. While teachers generally get the benefit of paid summers off, they’re experiencing burnout like no other profession. According to one recent study, over half of teachers surveyed considered quitting, particularly Black teachers and teachers of color. Another article revealed nearly 97,000 teachers have already quit their jobs this year alone, due to stress, school violence, and stagnated wages. Being a teacher has always been hard, but ever since the pandemic started, this line of work has gotten even more difficult to navigate. I often hear stories of teachers feeling like the effort they put in isn’t worth the “rewards” they get out of it. That was certainly how I felt when I student taught my last year of undergrad. The grass is unfortunately not greener on the other side.
And the reality is, for a lot of teachers, having summers off isn’t even guaranteed. Some teachers use the summer to get a head start on the next year with lesson planning and training for extra certifications (the motivator being a slight bump in one’s salary). Because paychecks remain low and inflation continues to increase, teachers have also found themselves taking on summer jobs to help pay the bills (it always comes down to money). My friends, many of whom are teachers, can attest to this. If teachers were actually valued in the U.S. and thus paid better and given more support, maybe there wouldn’t be a nationwide teacher shortage…
So while I don’t regret leaving the education field before I ever really started in it, as I reflect back on this past long, kind of sad, slightly stressful, and mostly monotonous summer, I do often wonder about the possibilities of what if…
That isn’t to say I didn’t have pockets of joy here and there. Below, I share what I’ve been reading, watching, listening, experiencing, and loving.
What I’m Enjoying ✨
Reading Recs 📖: I read a couple of novels this summer, stopping somewhere in the middle of each of them and picking them back up again one by one depending upon my mood. Ironically, I haven’t been reading as much fanfiction as I usually do (my normal cadence is 1-2 fics a day). I’m not sure what this means. I do miss the indulgent joy and excitement of fanfic and I’m hoping to get back to reading them again soon. But I’ve been enjoying original fiction more these days and I’m not mad about it.
I started The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor at the top of the summer and got about a quarter in (I’ve become a slow reader). I quickly became very jealous of Taylor’s ability to write complex, multi-faceted characters whose desperations, pet peeves, and ambitions felt palpable. You could really feel the weight of his characters’ lives on you. It raised a lot of thoughtful questions about grad school and reflected back much of my thoughts on the American creative writing workshop format (spoiler alert: I’m not a fan). Literature where characters’ musings, interiority, and opinions drive the plot! Who would’ve guessed that’d be enjoyable? I recommend checking out this great Esquire interview with Brandon.
I also read Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, one of the buzziest books of the year. Many of my pals in the publishing industry couldn’t help but inhale this book and I was no exception. It was interesting to read about a fictional social media drama storm going down in the book industry, but what intrigued me more was getting an insight into the technical and logistical parts of the publishing process from the perspective of a published author. As a sensitivity reader and editor who’s worked with the Big 5, and an aspiring author and somewhat former book blogger, I recognized many aspects of the process. The little insider “Aha! I got that reference” moments were what was most exciting! Many of the discourses whose threads run throughout the novel were also familiar, which made reading the novel feel immediate and urgent. Yellowface was not a perfect book by any means, but it did spark a lot of interesting debates and conversations about diversity in publishing. I’ll leave some reviews here by Asian American critics that I agree with: Terry Nguyen’s critique of the book’s diversity argument; Zoe Hu’s breakdown of the book’s attempt at satire; Cindy Le/With Cindy’s thoughts on the book’s depiction of race and class.
Some other great reads I want to highlight:
This essay about waitressing and being a writer (Dirt)
This article on the genre of the novel as “self-improvement” (Tank Magazine)
This profile on Merve Emre aka the “hottest and most divisive” literary critic right now (Business Insider)
This one woman’s reflection on former friendships and platonic falling outs (Vogue)
Next on my TBR: The Guest by Emma Cline, The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenz, All of This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, and White Teeth by Zadie Smith.
Watching Recs 📺:
TV Shows/Dramas: X.O. Kitty (bad but in a cute way); Love Between Fairy and Devil (a comfort cdrama rewatch from last year); Extraordinary Attorney Woo (SO CUTE! Also my only claim to law knowledge); Alchemy of Souls (Season 1 and 90% of Season 2 only. Likely will never finish b/c I refuse to believe it’s ending); King the Land (x2 in a row - once by myself in a rush and a second time but more slowly with my mom; rom coms are so back baby); Succession (Half of season 1, but only because of social influence from seeing the show posted everywhere); The Bear (Half of season 1 for the same reason I started Succession); Til the End of the Moon (started but never finished. I’m sure it’s devastating in the best way, but I don’t have the patience to continue).
Films: The Little Mermaid (the 2023 live-action version; Loved Halle, but only her); Barbie (dressed up and had a fun, laughing time with a whole group, including my mom!); Nimona (loveeeed!); Titanic (for the first time all the way through ever; I now realize what I’ve been missing my entire life lol); Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (loveeeed!); Red, White, and Royal Blue (cute but in a bad way); Marry My Dead Body (loveeeed!); Your Name Engraved Herein (sobs; halfway through it but loving it).
Next on my to-watch list: Past Lives (dir. Celine Song), Joyride (dir. Adele Lim), Asteroid City (dir. Wes Anderson), and Bottoms (dir. Emma Seligman), all of which came out this year. At some point, I just generally need to watch All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001 Japanese film; dir. Shunji Iwai) and Chungking Express (1994 Hong Kong film; dir. Wong Kar-Wai). And I need to watch D-Day: The Final, which is a recording of Agust D/Suga from BTS’ last concert shows in Seoul. I heard it wrecked people. I’ve already seen sneak peeks of it. I want to get wrecked too, but I’ve been so busy!
Listening Recs 🎧: I threw together a quick playlist. It’s a mix of pop, indie-pop, K-pop, V-pop, R&B, and rap. If you have great taste, then you’ll like it (:
Experiencing Recs 💃🏻:
Concerts: So far, I’ve seen SZA, Agust D/Suga (twice in two different cities), and Beyonce. There’s something about live music that I can’t get enough of. I will always prioritize seeing the live music experiences of my favorite artists whenever I can. But cries, my wallet!
Conventions: I attended Momocon, my first anime convention, earlier this summer in Atlanta. I had an exhausting, great time. My favorite parts were looking at all the exhibition booths, seeing people cosplay as my favorite characters, meeting Twitter and Tumblr artists I’ve followed for a long time, and getting to buy their prints in person. I’m looking forward to attending Dragon Con this Labor Day weekend, potentially dressing up….and meeting some celeb TV actors from my high school years 😱😳? (The 100 stans where ya’ll at!!!!!).
Catch-Ups: There were periods during this summer when I felt really lethargic and frankly depressed. But whenever I found myself in these moods and noticed the self-isolation creeping up, I tried to schedule a quick hang or meal with my friends (who for the most part live nearby me). I feel really lucky about this fact. I attended a bachelorette party, a baby shower, a wedding! I participated in multiple Zoom work sessions with my friends, which doubled as catch-up dates and helped me to stay both sane and productive. The number of Ubers and Lyfts I’ve taken just to see my friends! My takeaway is I always leave friend hangouts rejuvenated, believing life is worth living again. So to me, my well-being and friendships are worth the expense. (That being said, I need to start learning how to budget).
This was all in the first half of summer (May-June).
Explaining Why I Haven’t Written An Article in 3 Months
I struggle with first drafts. In particular, the first draft of a new article is always the hardest for me because I’m either still figuring out what the subject is going to be about — or I’m struggling against a mental block due to my inner perfectionism. There’s a weight I’d assign to the piece in my head and the prospect of trying to untangle its’ gnarly bits often causes me a lot of anxiety at the beginning. The anxiety gets especially high when it’s a piece I have an extra level of investment in or is challenging me to step out of my comfort zone.
In this case, I’d pitched a new piece back in April on the Vietnamese American book community. I’d reached out to a dozen sources, gotten quotes from people I’d never expected would respond to me (albeit late but eventually got them after many many follow-ups!), and had a solid skeleton outline of how the piece was going to unfold. But when it finally came to sitting down and tackling the draft, I got cold feet. It was frustrating and frankly embarrassing the amount of times I kept asking for an extension. I had all these expectations of what the piece needed to be and the breadth and depth I wanted it to have. It would’ve been the first piece where I felt like, hey, this is a journalist’s work. This is what journalists do! But things didn’t pan out the way I hoped.
A couple of months later, I mustered up some courage and was ready to tackle the piece. If you’re lucky, sometimes all you need is extra time and distance to get over the mental resistance in your head. This piece was more evergreen, so my editor was still game. But as I started to work on the article in earnest, that’s when my life conveniently turned upside down.
I count myself fortunate to never have had any serious run-ins with medical personnel up until this point. When I finally came face to face with the bowels of the hospital system in the second half of summer, I experienced firsthand both the graciousness and attentiveness, as well as the callousness and thoughtlessness of healthcare workers. Where I was scheduled to be on a beach somewhere in northern Florida, I instead spent my July 4th weekend at home, and later beside a hospital bed in the ER. Eventually, three weeks of no in-person contact or visitation allowed followed.
It all happened very suddenly. There’s no other way to describe my experience. The first three weeks of July were straight-up terrible. Every day, I repeated the same actions and rotated between the same mixed emotions:
Pacing back and forth in my room with a phone in my hand and trying to call the hospital 4 to 5 times a day to check in (by the end of it, the hospital room, patient number, and all of the staff’s names slipped off my tongue by rote);
Calling our medical insurance reps to notify them of a new service being done and confirming if they’ll cover it;
Sobbing to myself out of guilt and shame and constantly questioning if I was making the right decisions.
The entire experience, for lack of a better word, fucking messed me up. By the end of it, I questioned whether going to the ER had been the best choice, given more things spiraled out of our control than my family and I had hoped. It’s been over a month since all of this unfolded. I’m tentatively putting this out into the world in hopes that it’ll become true: I’m slowly coming out on the other side of all of this. Thank you for modern medicine! But also we need better systems in place for aftercare around short-term and long-term disability, because they currently suck.
I’m grateful to my family, my friends, and my community for being there for me when I needed it most. I was truly shocked by how hard my people rode for me and how much they cared for my well-being, reminding me to eat, sleep, and take care of my mental health. Including internet strangers and acquaintances! The constant check-in calls, the reassurances, driving up to visit me in person and taking me out to get some fresh air. I couldn’t have asked for a more patient, kind, and considerate support community.
The last article I wrote for a media outlet was this interview with Miss Teen USA Faron Medhi for Joysauce, which I had a lot of fun doing. Now that my life has somewhat settled back to a sense of “normalcy,” I hope to start writing and publishing regularly again. Speaking of which…
Welcome to TRANSCENDENT
One of my goals for the longest time has finally been achieved: Start a newsletter.
This newsletter has gone through a number of iterations. It was originally going to be a Vietnamese fashion newsletter highlighting current and upcoming Vietnamese and Vietnamese American people and brands in the fashion industry. But I very quickly learned I was super out of my depth and was more interested in reading about Vietnamese fashion than writing about it. Then the newsletter shifted to being a weekly dispatch on all things culture: TV, movies, books, fashion, lifestyle, food, you name it! I wanted to write all about it. The newsletter rapidly ballooned above my bandwidth and means before I’d even written for it. I thought it was best to start small and expand my scope from there.
So what is this newsletter about now?
Still an amalgamation of things. But ultimately, it’s my love letter to writers.
At the end of the day, what I found myself drawn to over and over again were other writers. What I kept reading about and kept having opinions about were writing and other writers! Whether that was novelists, poets, songwriters, screenplay writers, playwrights, critics, journalists, etc.
A publication about writers.
My written and visual perspective on writers whose writing goes beyond the range or limits of borders, time, settings, trends, industries, mediums, you name it. In other words, writing that transcends.
Here you’ll receive a weekly-ish essay, accompanied by a rotating mix of cultural analyses, intimate conversations, opinionated reviews, personal reflections, pieces I couldn’t place anywhere at other outlets, diary entries, industry news, and/or social commentary.
Much like a magazine, there will also include a few special recurring features, such as exclusive podcast interview episodes, playlists to accompany your writing session, hot gossip about writers (~oooou~), personal recommendations (link roundups! let’s gooo!), and curated dispatches of inspiration dropping straight to your inbox.
Ultimately, my hope is that this newsletter will force me to write and share more of my thoughts with a public audience on a more consistent basis. While I don’t think you have to write every day to call yourself a writer, I do think you have to at least write at some point! (Is this controversial?) Whether you share your writing with an audience is up to you and has no bearing on your writing’s merit or qualification. Personally speaking, I felt like I wasn’t a writer for a while, but I nonetheless clung to the identity of “writer” like a life raft because it was all I’d ever known and all I’d wanted to be. I actually think writers who obsess over being labeled as a writer, who are only in it for the cultural cache, and don’t actually write are kind of full of shit. My hope is that with this newsletter, I’ll develop an actual writing practice.
I also hope to conduct interviews with writers from different fields and that this newsletter offers writing that reads more like conversations in an open circle. With the state of journalism and digital media increasingly undervaluing writers and the art and craft of writing, I hope to play my part in highlighting its inherent value again.
Speaking of valuing writing, I’m only at the beginning of my journey with TRANSCENDENT, so I don’t expect support or interest right from the get-go. I have to put in the work first (and I plan to). That being said, I hope if you’ve made it this far to the end of this post, please subscribe and share this newsletter with your family, friends, and colleagues!
I’m still imagining and testing what this newsletter will be, but I’m so excited about the kind of outlet it’ll offer me and its potential for community. I hope you come along for the ride :)
Thank you so much for reading. Please subscribe! And have a great long weekend!
<3 Teresa
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