I take the baby to interview a Cornell professor—and other freelancing updates.

Also: how I do wellness journalism with no formal training.

Tulips near my house

I should start a “I take the baby to [ fill in the blank ]” series. I’m with her so often that a friend was absolutely floored to see me at an event without her. But the thing about babies is that they don’t stay babies long. Before you know it, it’ll be “I take my teenager to a [ fill in the blank ].” And while babies usually enjoy time with mama, teens often don’t. I’m soaking up the unconditional love, enthusiasm, (and diaper blowouts) while I can.

So, what have I been publishing lately?

Since my last update, I’ve continued to write pieces for Medicinal Media for a couple of reasons. I support their mission to help our humanity flourish in an increasingly technological society. Adrienne from YouTube channel “Yoga with Adrienne” is on the advisory board. And they pay 40 cents per word.

The process I use for science journalism goes like this:

1. I pitch an idea I find interesting to my editor.

2. I skim Google Scholar for recent research related to the topic, setting filters to 2019—.

3. I email the authors of the research asking to interview them. (I’ve also used Sourcebottle and a couple other free public relations resources. Since I live by an Ivy League university, I sometimes look through their faculty roster to see whether anyone’s research interests fit.)

4. I interview at least two experts in their field. Beforehand, I skim their CV’s (sometimes using ChatGPT to summarize for me) and prep 3-4 questions.

5. I use what I learned in the interviews and peer-reviewed papers to write the article. This usually involves organizing the narrative of our conversations into something clear and easy to follow with clarifying definitions, headings, bullet points, and other reader-oriented courtesies. I try to keep my opinions out of it, although I usually choose topics with slants that suit me.

The topics of my most recent pieces (forthcoming, not yet published) are:

• Virtual reality’s capacity to make us better people by immersing us in avatars of the “Other” (sea turtles, for example).

• Coping with election stress in 2024, with a focus on moving from anxiety towards action.

• The unique mental health benefits of attending live performances, especially on their power to alleviate loneliness.

That brings me to the baby…

This week, I took my one-year-old up to Cornell for an interview with a professor, so that I could meet my deadline for the live performance article without distracting my husband from finals. After the Ekstasis Inkwell experience, you might think I’m done bringing my baby to events, but it’s one of my deeper parenting convictions that we should try to include our kids in our work when opportunities arise. After all, God does that with us.

Because the professor was a woman, I thought she would like to meet a baby, even if it was a potentially crabby baby. This prediction proved true. Both predictions, I should say. The baby was crabby, and it didn’t ultimately matter. As we talked, the professor’s demeanor, initially weary, began to change. Her eyes brightened. She laughed softly. Part of her happiness came from talking about what she loved. But the rest came from the delight of being interviewed by the youngest professional journalist she’d ever met at a bare thirteen-months-old.

When we entered the professor’s office, the baby’s face dropped immediately from neutral to Greek tragic. Her lower lip wavered.

a real-life photo of the baby’s face

“Hi,” said the professor from her corner desk.

The baby began to howl.

But after this initial bout of unprofessional behavior, the baby settled down onto my lap and took charge of my pen and paper.

She remained there for forty minutes, flipping pages, and scribbling furiously. I cannot read her handwriting, but the notes are very thorough. I was also impressed by her ability to remain fully engaged while she took notes. As we conversed, she interjected questions with such intense eye contact that the professor would halt mid-sentence to answer. No one in the room understood the words she used, but we all felt they must be important. They sounded vaguely latinate.

Unprofessional howling, illegible handwriting, and incoherent questions are the bread and butter of modern journalism. My 1-year-old has publicly demonstrated her mastery of the field. This momma is so proud.

Other exciting news:

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I managed to get income-adjusted tickets to a conference this fall in the Catskills called Meaning Versus The Machine. It’s limited to 30 people and is participant-led, featuring keynotes with two Substack intellectuals—Paul Kingsnorth and Matthew Crawford. I only recently discovered Kingsnorth when the Free Press re-published his essay “The Cross And The Machine.” I was intrigued. He displays love for the natural world, poetic fire, and devotion to living out his convictions.

What excites me about the conference, besides Kingsnorth’s presence, is the sense that it is doing something both charmingly bizarre (suggested session activities include “a practical workshop in sharpening a chainsaw”) and historically important. I’ve felt for a long time that we need to lean into the sacredness of our bodies and physical experiences and to resist the forces trying to reduce us into a data-generating herd of zombie machines. As I await this conference, my excitement is inspiring me to do more reading and hopefully more writing on what it means to be human in 2024. Any reading suggestions welcome.

I’m waiting to hear back after applying to a journalism bootcamp with World Magazine (they also have programs for high schoolers, college students, and mid-career journalists). A couple days ago, I applied to a creative fellowship with Christianity Today (if you’re 18-26 and create for God’s glory, I encourage you to apply as well).

Aaaand… my baby just woke up from her nap, so I think this is a good place to leave you.

Time to build some community 💪

To those of you new to this corner of the internet, thanks for being here.

Who are you? What are your days like? Do you own a cactus named Stu? These are some things I hope to learn about. I am still wrestling to figure out how to cultivate more interactive/meaningful online community, but for now, let’s be silly and irrelevant.

To start off, if you agree community is cool and we should have more of it here, comment a random song lyric you enjoy.1

I’ll start, “Free as a bird. It’s the next best thing to be free as a bird.”

1. To comment, I think you need to open this in a browser or on the app. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I recommend getting the app. It has a lot of handy features for readers, including an AI Bot that reads aloud to you as you wash the dishes.

If you want to reply privately to me, just answer this email like you would a regular one!