On Showing Up Even When You Are Feeling Hopeless
The difficulties of being a freelancer + things that I have loved lately (for a brighter note)
This is an extra newsletter that I didn’t plan for last month. If you have been subscribers for a while (thank you so much!) you will know I send out a compilation of my previous month’s articles and a heads up for the current month’s ones every first Monday of the month. I call it The Monday Digest. Well, the first Monday of May is the 6th (next week), and so there was a lost Thursday (today) in between finishing April and starting May that I hadn’t accounted for.
If you are new to My Cup of Tea (hi and welcome!) you will see from now on you’ll get a new article from me every Thursday. They are all free for now but they still take a lot of time to plan, research, write and shoot, as I always include new images for each post. So realizing that May had an extra Thursday disrupted my plans a bit. Still, I decided to show up nonetheless to express gratitude and commitment.
This got me thinking about the essay
shared last month about the Invisible Labor of Being a Food Writer in 2024:Even writing this week’s newsletter I am struggling with just using the word writer and seem to always add content creator or social media manager because those roles have become so deeply ingrained in what it means to be a writer. Honestly we need a more inclusive term for what many of us are doing nowadays. We are not simply writing or recipe developing, we are creating non-f***ing-stop. Burnout is running rampant among creative professionals.
I have been writing for many years now but probably I haven’t made the right decisions in terms of marketing and promoting my work because I feel I haven’t moved much from the starting point.
At the beginning of this year I decided to shift from a website where I posted all my research to Substack. I liked the idea of the website because it was open to the Internet. Anybody could come in and read, be informed, be surprised or feel inspired by the different gastronomies of the world I had researched. But they had to find it first. And that almost never happened. It was also in Spanish, which is not only one of my mother tongues but also one of the most broadly spoken languages in the world, and yet, it felt I was being too niche.
Substack gave me the chance to try something new. I would write in English to invite many more readers in. It was also a platform that got me inside the readers’ inboxes rather than they having to find me. I think it was the right decision but sometimes I still feel hopeless.
I agree with Olga that is not about writing anymore. As a freelancer you need to know a thousand things including how to run a business, how to stick out from the crowd, how to find more subscribers, how to keep them, how to work with the algorithm to your advantage, how to promote and market your work, etc. And the same goes for photography.
Sometimes it feels I do it all and it is still not enough. If even Alicia Kennedy feels freelancer angst, what can the rest of mortal writers do?
What I normally do when despair hits it to leave it aside. I go take a walk and I try to see things with new eyes. I tell myself I write because I like doing it. I enjoy the mystery of the research, I enjoy finding myself intrigued by history and then wanting to share my interest with the world. I love the process of creating something from scratch (even if the blank page is also very scary), of transforming an idea into specific words to convey a feeling.
The vanity of the creator makes me feel there’s value in sharing what’s in my mind. It being an essay, a researched food history article or a set of photographies. And maybe angst is the price we have to pay for it. But I wish this angst was just related to the creation itself, not to everything else we must do to be seen.
Substack gives a chance to writers to be compensated for their work. It’s not with adds but with the generosity of readers that decide to support a specific creator. For now my work is free, so the best way to support me if you think my articles have value is to share them!
Maybe there will be a time when I’ll hit some magical button and all my hard work will be noticed (and then properly remunerated). But for now, know that I will keep on showing up, even if the calendar gets sneaky with me. And keep on feeling grateful and invigorated when my work gets recognition, like it happened with my latest essay On the Meaning of Comfort Food as an Expat. Because showing up is indeed much more gratifying when people are actually waiting to see you.
Things I have loved lately
On a brighter note, I wanted to share some things that have kept me away from feeling hopeless. They actually made me feel energized!
Discovering Massachusetts by car
Ross and I bought a car a couple of weeks ago. We have been living in Boston for almost a year but we didn’t feel the need for one until now. Actually there was no real need because Boston is a walkable city and it’s well connected with public transportation (even if the T is truly unreliable!). But we felt it would expand our experience here having a car. And so far it did! He have been taking day trips to different areas of Massachusetts and it has been fantastic.
Last weekend we went up to Newburyport, a small seaside town that felt like an English encounter, with small shops and brick buildings. We also stopped at Rockport, an artsy coastal town that has been the set for many movies. And on the way back home, to an ice cream shack in the middle of the road that had an incredible key lime pie ice cream! We would have never found it if it hadn’t been for Satoshi (yes, we named the car…).
Reconnecting with a Catalan spread, in France
At the beginning of April I travelled to the South of France to visit my dear friend Luz and her husband Ben. He has a family home close to Nîmes, so Ross and I spent 4 days exploring the Gard region with them. We went to Arles, where Van Gogh painted some of his most precious works; we also visited the Pont Du Gard, a 50 km long Roman aqueduct; and the salt marshes of the Camargue (more on that in a future piece). But what stroke me was discovering that one of the gastronomic specialities of the region was brandade, a cod spread I hadn’t eaten since I was a child.
In Catalonia we call it brandada de bacallà (“cod brandade”). And we add it to bunyols de bacallà (cod fritters) and to piquillo peppers as a filling. After doing some research I discovered is actually eaten all around the Mediterranean arch, from Valencia (Spain) to Liguria (Italy). Though the name may be Catalan as we have the verb brandar, that means “to move rapidly from one side to another”, indicating the action of shattering the cod with the olive oil to create a spreadable paste.
As a paste that they add to toasts is how they enjoy it in the Gard region. Estelle, Ben’s mother, prepared many aperitifs with brandade and I loved them all. Getting to savor a taste from my childhood years in a creamy, Frenchified version.
Spring colors around me
Spring is finally here in New England I am loving it! It’s magical seeing the trees go from bare to green in a matter of days. Also, there’s so many blossomed magnolia trees, tulips, daffodils, and forsythias around!
While in France, I went to visit the International Museum of Perfume in Grasse and then its gardens. It was a very sensorial experience to walk around all the flowers and plants that later make it into perfumes. Here’s a video I made of the experience:
A garden spring lunch
Being Mediterranean, I have a special appreciation for simplicity. My mum was and is a great cook but she’s always praised the ingredients and modified them very little. One of my favourite dishes growing up was a monkfish tale a la plancha (on the grill) drizzled with olive oil and lemon drops.
I felt something similar when Estelle prepared this easy lunch on their home garden. It was not fish being served but asparagus, sausages, roast potatoes, salad and strawberries. And it was blissful: the sun shining, the simple meal with the grass and wild flowers as a backdrop and the great wine and cheeses that are never missing in a French table.
