#104: defining against vs. defining for

a list of questions for the year

Good morning,

For the last two weeks, I’ve been in a deep work hole, sitting with old projects and new ideas, unsure of how to get myself to complete something that’s begun to feel stale when most of me wants to emerge into something new. It’s a major problem of the artist’s life, and one that I haven’t really encountered great solutions to.

For me, work often emerges alongside lived experience; a blessing and a curse because I can turn almost any life experience into writing or art, but if I’m not living with the material, it’s incredibly hard for me to want to invest any time into it. Once I feel I understand something I don’t want to sit with it any more.

So I found myself revisiting my own artist’s statement for inspiration. It tells me that I work on definitions—finding words for the things that are hard to describe or poorly described by existing vocabulary. Longtime readers know that’s essentially what I do when I write about journalism or motherhood or caregiving or work. All stale words for much deeper processes that are quite powerful if we let them be.

In this I realize the shift I find myself ready to make, and perhaps the source of my “completion” problem is that I’ve spent most of my career defining these things against existing models. Journalism is X, but that doesn’t work anymore, so what is it, other than X? Motherhood is X, but that model didn’t serve me well, how can I make it something other than X? Caregiving is X, but that feels invisible and overlooked, how can I make it more powerful and visible? Technology is X, but that limits us in Y ways, what else can it be?

While this interrogation has served me well and you’ve sat through over 100 letters of me riffing on some version of these questions, I’m finding myself moving toward a new practice—how can I define things for a reason, rather than against an old one?

Some familiar examples:

• What would it mean to examine journalism as something that ought to exist for the public good, not as a correction to what it’s become? (hi, news futures)

• What would it mean to examine motherhood as a window into navigating all of life, not just a rebuttal to the models we’ve inherited?

• What would it mean to approach technology as something that invents new approaches to life, not a just a tool to augment what’s slow or broken?

These questions extend to everything, from the personal to the existential:

• What does it mean to create family for a future you envision, not just against the version you’ve come from?

• What does it mean to build a product for the life you want users to have, not just against the competition or the market as it exists?

• What does it mean to build a company for the people inside it, not just against the models you've seen fail?

• What does it mean to stay in a city for what it offers, not just against the places you've left?

• What does it mean to pursue health for vitality, not just against illness or aging?

• What does it mean to engage with politics for the world you want, not just against the one you fear is taking hold?

The most inspiring people I know already think this way. I’m just catching up.

Already, I notice that my posture when exploring in this way is radically different. I’m not hunched at a computer writing. I’m sprawled on the floor in large formats.

I think this is a good sign.

What would you like to define for rather than against this year?

Happy Monday,

Jihii