'So, what are you working on?'
📝 Relevant To Your Interests #9
Happy Friday, A-Mailers!
Unusually for me, last week was hectic. I left my small town and travelled to London not once but – three whole times! These great voyages led to the inevitable: people asking me, “So, what are you working on?” A question that makes me deeply uncomfortable because it taps into some major insecurities.
So I want to talk about it. This week’s Relevant to Your Interests is all about a career condurum that continues to confuse me: how can I love my work but hate talking about it?
In it, I unpack my discomfort in discussing ongoing projects, plus tips and recommendations for being less touchy about talking about work. Including but limited to: the case for living in sync with your cycle, a survival guide for writers in a capitalist dystopia and cultivating an antiwork ethos.
If that sounds helpful, keep reading.
But first, my pitch 💌
A friend of mine recently sent me this text:
Honestly I don’t know what the fuck took me so long to become a paid subscriber to your newsletter. The fact that I always read your newsletter to keep me company in the subway and then I didn’t want to click on the link to pay in case payment actually didn’t process? What the fuck? Anyway this morning I’m at home and I just had an epiphany that of course I want to support are you kidding me.
What the fuck, indeed! If you’ve been meaning to support A-Mail, today is a great day to finally do it.
Paying subscribers get access to Relevant to Your Interests, the series you’re currently reading which contains essays, recommendations and curated links reconciling my complicated relationship with work. You also get my quarterly income reports where I share exactly how I made my money in the previous three months – profits, losses and all. Reader support also funds writing on work, money and power. You know, just the main forces in our lives.
☕️ A quick catch-up on my life
Ironically, I do have some fun work updates to share. Before you @ me, you didn’t ask me what I’m working on so I'm not contradicting myself here by doing so. 🙃
I chaired a panel at the Science Gallery in London about whether an AI could be our boss one day. I made the audience laugh when I said that humans have an uncanny ability to put an extraordinary amount of work into avoiding work. You can watch the discussion here.
I also did a lil bit of advocacy! I spoke at a government roundtable about why the UK needs a freelance tzar. The tl;dr is that the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (my fav creative institution because it gets writers paid) is campaigning for the UK government to appoint a freelance commissioner to look out for the needs of creatives. An initiative that I fully support!
Recent and relevant A-Mail posts:
