What a week, huh?

I've been feeling super burnt out and I have a feeling I'm not alone

Feb 21, 2021

I didn’t send any pitches this week. Truth be told I’ve been feeling a little burnt out — every time I tick something off my ‘to-do’ list I end up adding three more ‘life admin’ tasks to the list. The result is a constant low-level anxiety that there’s so much to do and not enough hours in the day. It’s frustrating because I have lots of cool ideas—things I want to write, projects I want to run to help young journalists—but I know I’m already spinning a lot of plates and there’s a risk that everything could come crashing down if I try and do too much.

Diyora Shadijanova 🇺🇿 🇹🇯 (Диёра Шадижанова) @thediyora

serious question: how do people deal with the overwhelming feeling of wanting to do everything all the time??? and more specifically the want to produce loads of stuff, whether that's art, music, writing etc. it's nice to be excited about life but it can feel so overbearing :(((

That’s also one of the perils of running a business (The Indiependent) around a full-time job in marketing. I gave two free talks this week about how to set up your own publication (one with News Associates, another with UEA’s Concrete), and I hope my passion for running a platform for young journalists came across. But it would also be disingenuous of me to say that running a website is easy. Or that every time I sit down to edit I am having fun. Sometimes, I just really can’t be arsed with all the emails. And that’s OK!

The situation I’ve found myself in this past week is that I have ideas, I just don’t have the energy to pitch them. This week I had to remind myself that we are in the middle of a ~Pamela Anderson~ [read: devastating global pandemic] and it’s totally OK to have a bad week, fortnight or even month. If you’re finding it hard to motivate yourself to pitch at the moment, don’t beat yourself up.

Perhaps you’re in the opposite boat—you are eager to pitch but you’re drawing blanks when it comes to ideas. The ideas will come, eventually—just keep reading. If, like me, you sit down to read but end up scrolling aimlessly on Twitter, curl up with a physical book or magazine and put your phone in a different room.

I’ve been struck by the honesty of other journalists I admire talking about their relationship with burnout—I love Anna Codrea-Rado’s LANCE newsletter and for the past two weeks she’s been honest about her struggles. I shared ‘This year I finally learned that work alone is not enough to sustain me’ by Elle Hunt in the ‘Recommended Reading’ section of this newsletter a few weeks ago, but it’s stayed with me ever since: “It certainly struck me as faintly ludicrous that I could burn out at home while in complete control of my schedule and doing highly non-essential work.”

I am, at the best of times, a bit of a workaholic and a perfectionist. I am very goal-oriented, and as soon as I finish working on something I find it difficult to just relax. I am constantly asking myself ‘What can I do next?’. But this week, I am putting my foot down. I didn’t send any pitches this week. I might not send any next week. And that’s totally OK.

My week

… in editing

Always a pleasure to edit, I enjoyed Kat Smith’s ‘Introducing’ piece on Australian artist Elle Músa.

Love learning stuff when editing, so I’m a big fan of Martha Lily Dean’s ‘10 LGBTQ+ Classical Composers You Should Listen To’.

Always a proud moment when famous people acknowledge The Indiependent as it’s a testament to how far the site has come in the past 7 years—this week we got some love from Francis Lee (God’s Own Country, Ammonite)!

Francis Lee @strawhousefilms

❤️

God's Own Country @gocfilm

‘Having spent his first two features making poetic links between queer love and landscape, Francis Lee has cemented himself as one of the most talented filmmakers working today’ @indie_pendent https://t.co/KZpBUupszi

… in writing

Pitches: 0

Commissions: 0

Not only did I get 0 commissions this week, I also got a rejection for my novel from a literary agency. They said it was “engaging, original and well-written”, though—so even though it was a rejection I’m gonna bank that as a win!

Articles written: 1

Articles published: 1

I self-published an incredibly personal piece that I felt compelled to write after reading FKA twigs’ devastating interview with ELLE: ‘FKA twigs is right — anyone can be the victim of abuse’.

… in listening/watching

I finished watching It’s A Sin with my parents on Friday, and simply was not READY. It is so sad, but so beautifully done. Definitely watch it if you haven’t yet got round to it.

Also, I re-watched Starter For 10 last weekend, which is a great film. Big fan of University Challenge. Even if my biggest contribution to any quiz team I’ve ever been on was acting as scribe…

… in reading

Killed an hour reading the physical edition of WIRED and realised that’s probably the longest I’ve gone without reaching for my phone in a long while—big yikes
‘‘It’s a miracle I came out alive’: FKA twigs opens up her abusive relationship with Shia LaBeouf’ by Marjon Carlos for ELLE absolutely floored me
‘Do what you want, but live with the choices you make’ — ‘Please put the can-i-write-for-evil-publications discourse to bed’ was salient stuff from Diyora Shadijanova for gal-dem RE: journo Twitter’s latest ~discourse~
Hannah Mylrea’s NME interview with London Grammar is a sad indictment of what it’s like to be a woman in the music industry
Zoya Raza-Sheikh’s interview with Zara Larsson for Clash was really personable and lovely
Serena Smith’s Refinery29 piece on ‘How Instagram’s ‘photo dump’ trend finds the beauty in lockdown life’ was lovely
As someone who was co-parented by the internet, this DAZED feature on how ‘Omegle defies its dick-ridden image to become a social isolation success’ by Izzy Copestake was really interesting
I enjoyed Vicky Greer’s interview Gigwise piece: ‘When art imitates death: Taylor Momsen in conversation’
Grace Medford’s i-D piece ‘What we still haven’t learnt from our treatment of Britney Spears’ was very articulate and thought-provoking
In the absence of Love Island, I enjoyed Emily Shead’s The Tab piece: ‘I dated a boy from every uni in the country so you don’t have to’
Charlotte Colombo’s Aurelia Magazine piece ‘The do not resuscitate notice given to people with learning disabilities is proof that our lives don’t matter’ was really saddening
As someone who has always lowkey hated clubs (can’t dance, I have anxiety), I would give my left arm to be in a nightclub dancing self-consciously right now. So I enjoyed Ella Glover’s ‘I’m scared my friends will have moved on by the time clubs reopen’ for VICE
Also for VICE, I liked Beth Ashley’s ‘How sex toys became the new celebrity fragrance’

Events

Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin, politics editor at BRICKS magazine, is hosting a free workshop on ‘The world of journalism: breaking in and breaking through’ on Tuesday 23 February from 6.00 - 7.00 pm that looks great.

I’m going to be chatting to students at The Oxford Student (which I used to edit) about journalism on Thursday 25 February.

PSST - The BBC Young Reporter national careers week workshop is taking place on Monday 1 March, from 12.00 - 1.00 pm.

Also, register for tickets for the Women In Media conference, which is taking place from 15 - 28 March. Rumour has it I might be making an appearance 👀

Opportunities

Psst if this list is cut off, you can view the full list of opportunities by clicking ‘View entire message’.

**About me:** I’m Beth Kirkbride, an NCTJ-qualified freelance journalist from Sheffield. I’m the founder and music editor of *The Indiependent*, a communal platform for early career-stage journalists. I started this newsletter because there’s a tonne of great resources promoting journalism and media opportunities in London, but not all of us want to live or work there. Because I’m passionate about access to the media industry for all, this newsletter will always be free – but you can buy me a ko-fi if you’d like to say thank you.

PS) If you like this newsletter feel free to let me know—tweet me @BettyKirkers or @DistrictPeaked

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