Silk + Water

Welcome back to another episode of Faces of Freelance!

Vedika is a British-Indian broadcast journalist and news producer, currently at France24 in Paris. She has previously worked at the Telegraph, ABC News, and Clover Films. Her documentary “Defeated: the Boxers Who Survive by Losing” won Best Documentary at the Broadcast Journalism Training Council awards in 2018.

It's been two years since Anos Ku Ta Manda came out so in this episode I share a little bit about my relationship to the book in the two years that it's been out and I invited Courtney Conrad and Saili Katebe on to share their work and their poetry journeys.

"In light of new information" is the second edition of The Island of Lost Voices segment of the podcast. The essay that I share is a deeply personal piece about the challenges that I have faced in my relationship and how the versions of the story that I tell depends on whether history is causing a strain in that moment.

In this episode I chat with Mica on all things fear when it comes to putting ourselves out there in our crafts and careers.

Mica (that's Mee-sha) Montana Gray is a Poet, Workshop Facilitator and aspiring Clinical Psychologist based in Birmingham. She currently works part time as an Applied Research Psychologist and has previously worked as an Assistant Psychologist in children's mental health services. She has completed an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Psychology and a Masters in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2017.

While completing her undergraduate degree, she had an experience of depression and drug induced psychosis which resulted in a hospital admission. This experience birthed the poetry collection 'when daisies talk' which was self-published in March 2019.

She also writes a personal blog sharing stories on navigating career, relationships, personhood and faith.

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Welcome back to another episode of Faces of Freelance!

In today's episode I chat with Hannah Ajala travel and journalism.

In today’s episode, I share some of the writing that I do when I am not writing specifically for the blog. I have tried and failed to find a home for this particular piece. However, I did have many internal discussions about the value of my work independent of whether or not others want to publish it. And, so, came the idea for a segment on my blog/podcast called The Island of Lost Voices for work that I produced but was unable to house elsewhere. The first podcast of this segment is an essay called Love (in Colour) for Black Girls, about my experience reading Bolu Babalola's Love in Colour as a former Meg Cabot aficionado.

I am, for the first time, calling my audio blogs podcasts and introducing them to the world as such with an interview I did with Ricci Shryock in December 2020.

Ricci is a photographer and journalist who is lucky enough to call Dakar, Senegal home. She hopes her work, published in outlets such as The New York Times, Foreign Policy, NPR and more, can provide a contextualised picture of challenges, triumphs and beauty of daily life in West Africa. Ricci taught photojournalism at the University of Dakar, and whenever possible she works in collaboration with local journalists who publish coinciding stories in the national newspapers and radio where she is reporting.

This is the first of what I hope to be a series of interviews called “Faces of Freelance” where I’ll be talking to people in the world of arts and media and in the gig economy about their journeys and hopefully that will help you and I to walk with the wise and become wiser.

From the archives 01/12/20

"My tiredness and stress and my partner's tiredness and stress had an effect on our relationship, which is why I have invited him to do this post with me. We are both in a place where we feel burnt out and we are literally counting down the days until we take our holiday. Being so busy has meant that we haven't been able to prioritise each other as we normally would, often sacrificing our quality time, that is already compromised because of the whole long-distance thing (which, by the way is very long) to be able to get work done. Our ways of coping with work stress aren't the same; while he would seek comfort by speaking to me (and if I was there, hugging me until he feels better), I deal with work stress by panic working, and trying to do everything I need to get done without interruption and with many tears and attempts at slowing down my breath. I don't appreciate having time taken away from the things I need to get done when I'm stressed. And so, we clashed."

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From the archives 17/11/20

"As a child I always loved to have my picture taken (my parents’ old devices are full of my selfies). I took fewer and fewer pictures as the awkward tween and teen phase came on, feeling self-conscious about my appearance (as many of us have and continue to struggle with) but also self-conscious about the process of taking pictures because I always feel like passers-by judge when they see me taking pictures – I know in the past that I certainly have, and it’s weird cause like why am I judging someone lol. Of course, I can only speak for myself, but I do suspect that it has something to do with associating taking self-portraits with vanity. To this day, I look around to see if anyone is there before I do up photoshoot. I don’t know who needs to hear this (me; me needs to hear this) but stop that. Take your picture with your chest, and whoever is bothered should keep it pushing."

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From the archives 03/11/20

"As I reflect on the week, I see all the ways that God answers my prayers with the opportunities he places right under my nose and the people he positions along my path and it's affirming because I feel like this is definitely a path that He had wanted me on, and He was just waiting for me to follow. It also makes me reflect on how through everything, I want to serve Him and others. The journalist I met was so kind and so prepared to share her knowledge with me, and if I am able to help make someone's life a little bit easier, then thank God."

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From the archives 20/10/20

"Like many of us who have found homes (or not) in book clubs, I have a habit of (1) buying books before having read the ones I already have on my shelf (really they’re just stacked on top of each other on my dresser) and (2) reading multiple books at the same time. My reading lists also include several blogs and articles from some of my favourite media outlets. [...] In this post I want to share with you some of the readings that have been the most impactful for me this year and have in different ways, made me (and continue to make me) a better writer."

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From the archives 21/09/20

"There’s a saying in kriol that goes sorti na pé ki sta. It translates to luck is in the foot. Another saying says si bu sinta, vida na sinta ku bo, and this one translates to “if you sit, life sits with you” which is to say that things start happening when you start moving. My dad’s been saying that to me since the beginning of the year and it echoes in the back of my mind like a mantra as I carve this path."

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From the archives 08/09/21

"On days that I don't feel like thinking, I still spend a lot of time in my own head, trying to figure out ways of making this writing thing sustainable. I've been asking myself many questions about the content I want to produce, whether it is worth producing and found that in planning, I neglected to plan for my own blog."

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