Happy day of the week everyone. My phone says it’s Saturday so it must be Saturday.
I’m in the midst of sheltering in place with everyone else in NYC and all I hear outside are sirens and it’s scary. But thank goodness for the internet and soup. Also, thank goodness for my cat, Lalo (his government name is Milagros Thicc Boi Mercado).
He naps like he’s never had to racially/class code switch at work while being verbally abused on Slack a single day in his life. It’s such a beautiful thing to witness honestly. It’s keeping me sane as I try my best to fact-check a whole book in less than a month, report on COVID-19, and write obituaries (this is not a joke).
Also I applied for unemployment and it sucked really hard because I was one of millions of people and IDK how any of this works. Read about it here.
Emergency Grants:
I’d like to point out that I’m just the messenger on these. I’ve seen several lists of grants and I figured I’d put them here on one list for everyone to see. Hope they help.
Emergency artist relief. Must be in the U.S. to apply.
SF arts & artist relief fund. Must be in San Francisco to apply.
Boston artist relief fund. As the name suggests, for artists in Boston.
Rapid response fund. This one is specifically for Muslim creatives.
AAWW fellowship. This one is specifically for Asian-American writers/artists.
Emergency fund for writers. Applicants must live in the greater Pittsburgh area.
Other newsletters to check out:
I’ve plugged this before but why not again, especially now that we’ll all be indoors cooking more often. Check out This Needs Hot Sauce for food thoughts, food reporting, and food pictures. And recipes.
Also a re-plug, but Deez Links keeps me sane and on top of what’s going on in media and it’s also a very insightful read. I’ve learned a lot about newsletters in general and I can’t believe it took me this long to subscribe.
Alicia Kennedy is a food, booze, and environmental writer from Long Island NY who is now based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She’s been my editor for many articles and a writing inspiration for many years now. She has a lot of great hot takes on things in her work and on Twitter so she’s def worth a follow.
Things to remember:
If you are trying to get a job in journalism and you’re having a hard time, or if you’re new to freelancing and it’s hard to get a lot of bylines right now (it’s affecting me too)… don’t be embarrassed to get another type of job while you freelance. You can do both. You deserve to have an income and having other jobs teaches you how to speak to different kinds of people. It’s not a personal failure and it took me such a long time to think that way. Also, if Karen Ho tweets it, it must be true. (Follow her you’ll learn a lot about media and media related things).
Stay safe, wash your hands, and stay indoors (if you’re able to).