Feeling Caged In? What If You Opened the Door
Wandering around wondering if this is all we can do... I'm evolving this space. Welcome to "Not Your TYPE(cast)," where we unravel ourselves from the narratives that box us in.
I do not feel like myself here.
More accurately, I do not feel like my fullest self here.
So I’m taking these next questions on poetry from Terrance Hayes to reintroduce myself, to redefine this space for me, to uproot, evolve and most importantly for one core characteristic of who I am, rebel. I am going to rebel – and hopefully inspire others to join me – against the boxes we want to store everyone away in.
If you’ll indulge me in looking back… I got a journalism degree from a state school in my hometown in Missouri. After graduating, I took the first job I could get that was far away from my hometown in Missouri. That was a financial reporting job in Washington DC. Bailey as a financial reporter was a surprise, to everyone and myself. But my interest in leaving Missouri eclipsed my concern about preserving a sense of self.
I love that I made that decision.
After 6 months there, I jumped into a financial technology reporter role in NYC. And within months, I was annoying my editor, yet making the case successfully, to cover cryptocurrency and blockchain.
This was late 2012. Bitcoin was fluctuating between $10 and $20 a coin. It was largely used to purchase drugs on the now-defunct online black marketplace Silk Road. Most of its enthusiasts believed we could destroy the large corporate payment system and maybe even the state. Reasons varied. Maybe we’ll get into mine someday.
This is the company I keep. Bold, brash, inventive, creative, edgy.
Fast-forward through an insane, surreal, dream career over the past 12 years…
I have loved most minutes of it. I was one of the earliest journalists covering the topic (and investing) and am seen as an expert. I have made better money than most journalists, doing harder, more meaningful, work could ever dream of. I started working in events and have traveled around the globe on other people’s dime. Not to mention, I was in roles that were largely remote, and I took advantage of living and working from wherever. I understand technology (not just crypto) – the stuff we all rely so heavily on today – better than most, which is highly advantageous as I go about my life.
I have worked really really hard. And I am soooo soooo lucky.
But now, I am soooo dissatisfied with the typecast as the crypto girl.
I have struggled to place articles about anything else anywhere else. Maybe it’s because all my clips are crypto, and that does come with a certain stigma. Maybe it’s because I don’t know how to pitch, although that seems unlikely 12 years into a career that was many times freelance. Maybe it’s because editors today don’t have time or energy to give a new writer a try (I was an editor, I understand this). Maybe it’s because I haven’t tried hard enough; to be fair, I do get quite discouraged after one no.
Maybe it’s because people want you to stay in your own fucking lane.
I felt such serendipitous joy when Kern Carter in his newsletter Writers Are Superstars published “What Would Toni Morrison Think?” about “The Gaze” this week.
The Gaze is telling you to look left and right before you walk ahead when all you want to do is put your head down and run. The Gaze is telling you that running is dangerous, but if you walk this way, there’s a prize waiting for you at the end. But you must walk in your lane, the lane that it has drawn.
I say fuck the Gaze.
Yes. Yes. YES.
As a writer, content creator, artist, creative of any kind, shit, maybe human of any kinda, we hear it all the time – You need to focus. You need to specialize. You need to have a niche.
At the time I started this Substack, I was working through a course with London Writers’ Salon. They had us students work through a series of exercises to figure out what our corner of this space would be. (Note: I got so much out of that course. This is not a criticism. I needed to do that to do this.) And because of that – and the limited time I have to put towards Substack as I’m working on a memoir – I decided I would focus on poetry, poetry only, specifically the 190 questions Terrance Hayes poses about a century of American poetry.
That’s niche.
I was told by the instructors and my peers that it was good. It has a timeline. It has a rhythm. It doesn’t get ahead of itself. It has the bars, hinges and lock to make my own cage.
I love poetry. I read poetry everyday. I’ve been wanting to do this Terrance Hayes project for a couple years now. So as I was constructing the cage, suspiciously, it did make sense.
You know what doesn’t make sense?
Staying in the cage of my own making in an effort to make myself more digestible. I have the damn key!
I’ve been traveling this month. In Kuala Lumpur, I met this charming tour guide and during my last night in the city, we go out for drinks. His dream is to move to Thailand.
Why?
Basically: “I just need to get away from here, do something different.”
Say no more. I understand.
We have a beer and then, he asks me if I want to go for a ride. Of course I do. I am looking at the buildings as if they’re the first buildings I’ve ever seen. He is skipping all the sad songs on his playlist.
“What’s your dream?” he asks all of the sudden.
“Well…”
In this moment, I am stuck. I feel like Sylvia Plath under the fig tree.
“I, I don’t know.”
It feels like something you shouldn’t admit. And yet, I kinda like admitting it.
I don’t know what I’m doing right now. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I feel like I’ve lost the plot, or maybe just that sense of fiery passion I had in my 20s when all this working and hustling was new.
I continue: “I worry I can only do one thing. That’s why I’m taking a break from my job. I decided I needed to really try, give it all my effort, to do something else. But I worry that I am only good at writing about crypto.”
“Me too,” he says. “Am I only good at being a tour guide?”
“Surely, that’s not true.”
As I write this, I’m getting kinda teary.
There is also a South Korean woman. She had been living in the States for years, working some corporate job, dealing with the traumas that most people don’t get to where we are without, until it finally became too much. She quits. Moves back home with her parents in SK. Travels. Tries to answer the big existential questions.
We’re all calling it a sabbatical.
There are so many of us out here wandering around wondering if this is all we can do.
Terrance Hayes asks:
Walt the bullish Orpheus or Emily the birdlike Eurydice? Walt the queer bachelor and Emily the queer spinster? Walt the xenophobe and Emily the agoraphobe? Walt the white dude and Emily the white lady? What are your adjectives?
If you’re new here:
This is part of the 190 Questions project. Every week I explore, research, and contemplate one question from the poet Terrance Hayes' lecture "Questions for Reflection on a Century of Poetry."
But it’s also an introduction. Keep reading…
I’d rather be bullish; Eurydice, because I don’t want to be an insecure Orpheus who looks back at the last second; queer, but mostly straight, which frustrates me daily; no ‘phobes for me thanks; and yeah, I’m a white lady.
Those aren’t all the adjectives. Those aren’t even the most important adjectives for me personally. I don’t even know all my adjectives. They’re currently in a state of flux.
Although one always seems to find its way to the surface… Rebellious.
I get in over my head.
Reframed to be a bit softer… Multi-faceted. Versatile.
I’m the junk drawer.
I accept my multitudes (thanks Walt ole boy). Even if, with all the brushes in different colors, they turn the water the most off-putting brown-gray color.
I reject your boxes. I reject the typecast.
And with that, let me introduce Not Your Type(cast).
This is the newsletter now. Here, I’ll be writing about the process of breaking free from a typecast. It’ll be the insecurities and struggles along the way; the reasons I’m forging forward and maybe you should too; the wins, which we can celebrate together, because this is all happening in real time.
Seems like a niche.
Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with having a focus. There are so many great writers here (and out there) that write one kinda thing, and I read all of that one kinda thing. Because it’s good. Really good. You can tell they’re focused because they’re passionate; they know who they are and what they want.
But as I untangle myself from my typecast, I’m reinventing myself. I’m trying to figure myself out again. And if you’re doing that, focusing on one thing is limiting the potential.
Which means, I’m going to write about other stuff too.
I’ll continue doing the poetry project, because like I said, I love poetry.
With 30+ years experience being myself, I assume I’ll also write about travel. Probably some art. I’ve been known to dabble in politics. I’m going to write about love, sex, and relationships. I’m going to write about people, so many wonderful people I have the pleasure of meeting and being inspired by.
I’m going to write about whatever feels like an adjective to hold onto in that moment. 🙏
As I was ideating and writing this post, so many people’s words and projects inspired and pushed me, so I wanna give a little h/t (hat tip in internet).
Obviously
, who became an actual part of this post. Fuck the Gaze man!- who’s project reminds me three times a week to do what’s good for my mental health. This is one of those things! Also as I’ve been learning more about your life, it seems you’ve broken typecasts over and over. Let’s talk about that sometime.
- of - I’m not entirely sure I can articulate how you opening up your notebooks helped, but it did. I think it has something to do with this:
Jen Hitze who posted this on the Notes feed the other day –
Someone not on Substack – Keenan Houser. We met recently and he has been nothing but supportive of everything I do. It’s an exciting experience to get that from a “stranger,” because it signals that maybe, actually, you are kinda good at stuff.
And countless other people who have said something, written something, art-ed something that sits in the recesses of my brain keeping me acting out like this. ✊
What Do You Think?
I’d love to hear from you all about the newsletter’s transition. Or how you feel typecasted and how you’re trying to break free. Or honestly, whatever you feel like being excited about or venting about today.
Go for it, Bailey!
I love bird cages!