Hello blogging my old friend

I have been ideating for months about returning to this place: blogging, my first love which got me into public writing which I have forsaken for others (newspapers, thesising, children's books, poetry etc). I have missed this form of writing: a low maintenance platform which helped me find my voice. For a while I rationalised that it was just a season and it has served its purpose. But now that I am reviewing my relationship with writing, I think I am due fo another season with blogging.

Since 2018 when I first started working on my PhD I developed a different relationship with writing. I was writing a different genre. My supervisor was at pains explaining this to me in order to help me develop my academic voice. I was resistant. It was like learning a new language. Eventually I gave in because I always want to be a good student. But it was after many frustrating conversations with my supervisor and many drafts. She asked me to stop writing for other platforms. Perhaps that is part of the reason I abandoned this blog. Part of the PhD process was meeting deadlines and working according to the three years worth of funding I had received. I also began writing academic papers and papers for seminars and conferences; some have been published, others have not. Much of this was also driven by academia's need for us to produce outputs. This has begun to create an anxiety about how much, where to publish and how often. I am now working at my second university and I still feel like I am making sense of this new culture towards knowledge production and the world of ideas.

Since the PhD, I published a collection of poems (Ilifa), a children's book series Imbokodo (with Xolisa Guzula) and an afterword in Noni Jabavu's collection of columns A stranger at home (with Makhosazana Xaba). These have been exhilarating experiences four years in a row. Much of this has taken me by surprise and possibly a different blog post for another day. The beauty about these books has been that they have helped me identify my anxiety about academic writing. They have reminded me that I have many writing voices and projects that are not bound to the tyranny of academic publishing (even though they count as creative outputs which DHET recognises) because they emerged from my own convictions and collaborations with friends. The poetry has been the greatest gift because it is a gift that keeps on giving because it involves a different process of writing which is often private and at times spiritual. These forms of writing have reminded me of the joy of writing.

Since the PhD, academic writing has taken a turn. No one warned me about this change. Mostly people warn about the spare feeling once the PhD is submitted and there's nothing but waiting for examiners. I was never prepared for the sadness I developed after losing what felt like hallowed time to focus on one area and drill deeply into a particular focus. I often lament that I miss the routine that I established during the three years. It was a beautiful rhythm which revolved around mornings at my desk, reading and carving out time for a life (except when I disappeared in order to finish the thesis). Now I have to juggle teaching, departmental responsibilities, book launches, public talks and writing projects seem to be competing with everything else. And when I am writing, I seem to be on other people's deadlines because all the papers, chapters, books come with deadlines. I seem to be writing as a means to an end rather than writing simply because that is what I do. And as for reading (which is the other side of the coin of writing); I find myself wrestling time for that, especially reading for pleasure and not reading with a writing project in mind.

The tyranny of publication deadlines has slowly eroded my joy for writing. At some point I had to catch myself when I began to equate being a writer with published work. This was around the time I started writing for the Mail and Guardian again (I stopped because they wouldn't pay me; they still haven't. They ghosted me when I followed up). Writing felt like it only mattered if it was being published regularly. I find this is the other shadow of visibility as writers; somehow we have to remain relevant by the other forms of writing that keep us in circulation in between the books we produce. When I stopped writing for the Mail and Guardian I was confronted with all the essays I had written because I had lots of ideas I wanted to explore but as soon as the columns ended, so did the writing. I have been acutely judging myself for this. I reserve the harshest form of judgement for myself. Alongside this judgement has been the feeling of shame I feel every time I ask for an extension for a writing piece. For every writing project I have had this year, I have had to ask for extensions. Much of this has been as a result of the nature of first semester which is dedicated to teaching which takes up every ounce of my energy. I cannot seem to write, teach, supervise, research and keep up with admin. No one seems to really but we (academics) continue to push ourselves one way or the other. I have been making list upon list of all the writing projects I hope to return to now that I have a lighter teaching semester. Last year I felt a different rhythm but this year all I seem to be doing is rewriting the list and not actually getting to the writing itself. And if I do, I'm not happy with the quality of what I am writing. I pulled an article from a review process because the reminder emails were giving me anxiety. I am quarter-to pulling out of a book project I submitted a chapter to (I have been reworking the chapter since May and it's just not coming together). 

I have finally completed a book project where I am one of the editors: we've been working on it since 2020 and my role was mostly the admin of keeping the contributors in the project and co-writing an introduction and curating a book we can be proud of (which I think is going to be amazing!). I was hoping this would give me a new wave of energy but instead I am hiding behind other projects which are important but I know are taking me away from writing. I have always been a multi-tasker working on multiple projects because when I am bored with one project, I can move between projects. All my writing projects excite me and some I have extra support with collaborators but I just can't get past the feeling that I am not doing them any justice.

I guess I am writing this here to air out this weird shame I have been sitting with. Or perhaps expose the behind-the-scenes of my writing life which feels very chaotic at the moment. And this is happening at a time when people are congratulating me on all the wonderful work I have done in the past few years. Much of which was done quietly over a few years, often slowly and without deadlines. One of my mentors advised me last year to dedicate one month in the year where I do nothing other than write: no extra-curricular activities. It worked for about 75% of the month last year on account of book events for Imbokodo. Right now I keep ideating time where I am simply left alone: no invitations, no requests etc. I find this happens when I intentionally disappear and simply say no (which never gets easy).

I want a different relationship with my writing. I need a different relationship with my writing. I want to write without the external pressures of deadlines. I want to write purely for the joy of it. Which is partly how this blog came about. I was struggling with academic writing. I needed to think through some ideas. And even when I had resolved the academic writing funk, I continued when I was a teacher and I would write about my classroom experiences. During that season blogging became the tool to keep me writing because teaching seemed to leave very little time for writing. The thread seems to be the need to keep writing in spite of the other demands. But this does not resolve the problem with deadlines and ideas that do not seem to be shifting because I feel stuck. 

Coming back to blogging is also about reminding me that I have other writing ideas that do not quite fit into the other projects I am working on but need a place for expression. When I opened blogger to start writing this post (which I was determined to publish no matter what), I found a draft from April which began a lament about writing followed by a story about racial profiling (TBC). And then I stopped. Earlier this year I had even set up a monthly reminder that at least once a month I would post a blog post, dololo! It is August tomorrow. It was taken me more than six months to come back to this because I know it is a muscle I need for getting back into writing. The trick is, will I maintain or will I disappear into the shame of asking for more deadlines?