By Sammy Ginsberg
Thoughts are going round and round in my head so I thought it was time for an update. Things are happening!
Los Feliz Writers Festival
The Los Feliz Writers Festival is launched! So far we’ve had over 12,000 views with two of our workshops sold out so I added more tickets, and our other events are doing really well too. We had a pre-festival happy hour for the writers on our database at a cool wine bar called Tabula Rasa, one of our partners! Then we attended Sunflower Station Press’s Sunflower Nights Poetry reading after – another one of our partners!!
Then I was interviewed for a podcast about the festival. Oh gosh, I was nervous and started to edit myself while speaking. I’ll share it when it comes out!
I’ve been doing all the comms and publicity stuff, reaching out to journalists, messaging all involved, and designing/posting on social media. It’s so fun! Dawn, the co-director, is doing tangible things like putting posters up, talking to local businesses in-person, and just showing up. It’s going really well working together so far!
Burnt Out Bitch
At the same time as all this, I finally put everything I’ve written of Burnt Out Bitch and a few things I haven’t published yet in a google doc. It is over 80,000 words! I’ve written a novel. Thus, I contacted one of my friends who is a professional book editor and she’s doing a Editorial Assessment! YAY!
I was trying to edit myself, but it was so hard to get an outside perspective when it’s just my voice, my life reflected back at me. I’m
Researcher
I’m working out the details of my contract as a researcher for Cambridge ThinkLab. It won’t be official for a few months, but I’m allowed to tell people it’s happening and I’m doing work on it as part of my role at the CSUN Writing Project! All coming together.
I updated my bio and my LinkedIn. This is the beginning of a new story. Like a phoenix (my alternative middle college mascot!) I am back. Burnt Out Bitch is now here with a very clear purpose: to nurture the infrastructure of support for writers and teachers of writing!
From going on medical leave for over 5 months last year and literally just going to therapy, reading self-development books, and reflecting on what the fuck happened to me, I’ve learned a lot! More than that, I feel confident in knowing who I am, where I’ve been, and what I value. I’m putting that knowledge into practice right now.
I’m still at the beginning of that journey, especially financially – but I believe it will all work out. As I’ve been telling myself, money comes and goes, but your health, your relationships, your happiness – those are always priority, those if they go down can really fuck you up and you may even DIE!!
I have started to think about applying for some full-time jobs that fall under my mission statement as well as looking at applying to YCombinator and really launching a startup. I don’t understand the finances to do the work, who has the money? How do you get money? How do you make money? How do you get investors? How do you get people to give you money? It seems like that’s how the world works.
As my sister reminded me yesterday, some companies have crazy money! Like 11 million dollars of money spent that they literally don’t know what they spent it on and it doesn’t even fucking matter. How do we tap into that network? How do we get those people with that kind of money and power to engage? To get involved? What are they spending their money on? How did they make their money?
For most of my life, I have rejected money. I believed that people who prioritized money over people were superficial hustlers who are not to be trusted. And yet, I have learned that to help others, one needs to be financially secure. And also that people who need help don’t want to be a charity case or competent, they too want to feel competent, in control, and that they are able to contribute to their community and belong.
They don’t want your donations, your free food, your secondhand clothes – they want to have the resources to buy what they want, to choose.
This has been talked about a lot, labeled the White Savior Industrial Complex. It is fascinating that in the wake of so much devastation in LA, it is the white savior industrial strategies that are being used. Creating heroes and victims instead of empowering people to take care of themselves and their communities, and teaching them how to develop their own resources and activate their own network.
I have been feeling a lot of complicated feelings especially with ICE Raids, fire devastations, and the atrocities in Gaza which are causing hate-crimes and terrorism all over the world as people try to advocate for the human rights violations taking place in Palestine right now.
I have been wanting someone in my network who knows more or is directly impacted by the events to tap me in, to tell me how to support, to organize me, to put me in place to support, to educate me on the situation in real life, in person, by people I know and trust, and it’s just not happening. Instead, I’m being bombarded on Instagram by the most horrible things- definitely a form of secondary trauma. Instead of being in community to work through these things – it’s just random ass organizations and nonprofits that I don’t know anyone who works for them from all over the world trying to get me to give them money or call my representatives or show up for a protest all alone or go on a zoom call.
Something I think about a lot is how if people just used technology less – all the energy and electricity and resources we would save!!! If people just did Shabbat like the Orthodox Jews and we all had no electricity for 24 hours every week – imagine the environmental impact of that.
When you go to a play, or a movie theater, or meet with people outside and don’t use your phone or computer to talk, you are doing so much good for nature and the environment!! Isn’t that fucking crazy.
If instead of using ChatGPT or googling, you open your door and ask your neighbor, or go to a local group that you can walk to – all the energy and resources we’d save!! Also we’d stop giving our money to tech companies, and start giving it to people we know who live locally.
Hyperlocal is the new buzz word!! Building hyperlocal infrastructure. That is what I believe to all the fucking crises in the world. That is my mission. That is what I am working towards.
In that case, no point in applying to work at Substack or Netflix (although damn that 100,000 paycheck sounds so FINE!!!!) – they are trying to market to a global audience, and to me – that’s where the root problem is.
My only thought is that if those global networks with BIG MONEY choose to nurture and invest in hyperlocal networks, then this radical paradigm shift could actually happen. Damn, is that my cover letter? Yes bitch yes it is.
Is that the mission of my start up? Yes bitch. Yes it is! hahah.
Oh we saw & Juliet Yesterday at the Ahmanson and is was brilliant. This is my second time seeing it!
Tomorrow I’m going to substitute teach for the first time. My first day! Tonight, I’m going to hike with someone who I haven’t seen in a while and probably a concert! Let’s go!
Also I am thinking of doing Comms and audio book producing as a startup for local writers. We see! We see!
Love you lots
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