During 2020, everybody was hypothesizing how long it would take for COVID-19 to disappear or, at very worst, not be a daily problem. To my surprise, a lot of knowledgeable people admitted that they thought it would be weeks or months before it was all over. Having watched the news every night going back to December when the initial reports out of Wuhan hit our shores, I had the notion that it would take much longer than that. In fact, I was hunkering down for the worst as my mind went to a number that made sense in my head. It would be enough time for the dust to settle and leave behind a semblance of recovery. To me, COVID-19 would stop being a problem in five years.
That’s not exactly the answer anybody wants to hear. They want their lives to return to normal. By the end of 2020, I personally was struggling to survive without social stimulation. When you’re at the starting line of “five years,” it seems so far off, like it will never be obtainable. Somewhere in the coping you keep moving forward, praying that the inching forward is doing any good. Having lived through one of the worst global catastrophes in modern history, I am familiar with the pain many faced to even make it five years from that day. To call today “post-pandemic” still feels farcical in my mind because, on some level, we universally haven’t accepted the fallout of a collective trauma that’s left all of us somewhat worse off. Only those willing to address it are beginning to understand what the past five years have been like.
Along with my revelation that 2025 marks five years since I made that comment, there’s also the fact that today marks the fifth anniversary of The Memory Tourist. In theory, it wasn’t a “pandemic journal” or whatever you want to call it. My intents were to make a fresh start in my life following what felt like a more meandering approach to writing throughout my earlier years. I started Optigrab around 2008 as a place to share random opinions without any grounded sense of identity. While I was also running the more successful The Oscar Buzz, it felt more limited in terms of topics I could cover.
What I wanted was to enter my 30s with a website that felt more “serious.” Not in the sense that I was doing hard hitting topics, but more that I challenged myself to actually think about what I was saying and put thought into every word on the page. I’d go through the research and editing process with hopes of building a substantial portfolio. I wanted less to write about hot topics and more subjects that meant something to me. I wanted something to say, “this is me” and give me enough pride to want to look at it years later with (positive) curiosity. To be direct, I wanted to have a website not dissimilar from Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, which mixed commentary with everyday life in such a way that the critiques became one with understanding how Rabin saw the world. It should be noted that outside of influence, I don’t believe that much of what The Memory Tourist became mirrors its influence. If anything, I envy Rabin’s ability to be more cutthroat and entertaining while I’m stuck in a quasi-journalistic tendency to go long.
So how has the website changed in five years? The simple answer is: A LOT. There’s almost 1,100 more articles than there was on March 20, 2020. That’s millions of words I’ve dedicated to mixing commentary and vulnerability into a singular vision. I’m not sure all of it can be labeled quality (so much filler in 2020 alone), but it builds a greater sense of who I am and what I care about.
In the early days, it was strangely infantile at points given that I couldn’t write thoughtful music reviews despite often dedicating two entries to the subject in a week. While I went in acknowledging this, the time it took to get halfway decent was rough and even more so to realize that it wasn’t acceptable to just write about new albums. I needed to find artists that spoke to me and warranted deeper discussion. Sure, that meant I sometimes jumped the gun and overpraised artists like Lizzy McAlpine, but I think it was one of those trials and errors that needed to happen. It would take time.
The most notorious element of The Memory Tourist stems from the end of its first year. Because of what happened, I was never able to develop a planned annual celebration. In my mind, the website would run smoothly so that every March 20 I had this novelty column highlighting something goofy. I never determined what that was because by then I was in the midst of a terrible depression and existential crisis that was escalated because of the pandemic. Oddly enough, there was something about Joe Biden’s inauguration that made me hold out until that day. I even watched the ceremony three times. Then, as if feeling safe, I let the worst of it take over. As a result, the first half of 2021, is a complete blur outside of rewatching the Euphoria episode where Jules goes to therapy close to two dozen times.
Among the caveats I eventually settled on was a decreased output. As impressive as it is to think that I wrote hundreds of articles, sometimes up to three daily, between March and December 2020, it really did take a toll on me to the point that I spent a significant period of time struggling to want to so much as write. Given that it’s something that’s defined me since I was a child, the thought of leaving behind the written word was horrifying. As it stands, Pieces of a Woman (2020) is a movie that remains in my mind less because of its quality (I really liked it) and more because it was the moment where I sat at a laptop for two hours and failed to write a satisfying paragraph. While I would be able to churn something out on Promising Young Woman (2020) on Letterboxd, I was finding that my passion for traditional writing was fading.
In the four years since Pieces of a Woman took me captive, I’ve decreased my film reviews significantly to the point that I often write more about music and literature during any given month. I’ve become less interested in keeping up with latest releases and have mostly become the person who complains about the independent theater infrastructure crumbling and, as a result, making the experience lesser. Like everything else, I realized that the only way to write a meaningful essay was to wait until something truly struck my interest. Thankfully, there’s been a lot to fill that void even if my lack of organized scheduling means that it’s infrequent at the moment.
I also realized that in an effort to make The Memory Tourist more “personal,” I would need to more directly talk about myself. The pandemic left me feeling isolated without any sense of connection to a larger world. While I had made friends on Twitter, the reality was that my eagerness for validation spiraled so out of control that I was saying irrational things late into the night in hopes of getting interactions. I wouldn’t say they were toxic, but my mind tells me they were unpleasant to the point that I’m still surprised anyone stuck around. Given that I made a lot of friends on Film Twitter, having a public falling out with “critic” as a desired career probably didn’t strike them as enjoyable fodder.
In the five years since The Memory Tourist started, I think the most apparent change is the direction everything is heading in. There’s been essays about joyful and unpleasant experiences. I’ve worked out a lot of complicated feelings on there in the hopes of finding someone who understands. While this stems from my attraction to people who are vulnerable, it could also be that as a writer I’ve long believed that you don’t know what you want to say until you write it out. Speaking has never been my strongest gift, so often I need to sit for an hour and see where my brain goes. I’m sure there’s some controversy to be had over wanting to share everything, but I think I’ve learned to be more selective of what makes it to the final public edit.
With all this said, it’s encouraged me to be more outgoing and, in the process, learn and accept things about myself. The pandemic was an overwhelming moment in history and I’m sure did permanent damage to my enthusiastic outlook on life. While I remain hopeful that things will work out if I work hard enough, I write now not to please the algorithm, but to find audiences who care about the same things that I do. That may come with certain backlash given that I don’t feel “camera ready” and thus can’t fully convince myself to invest in other more viral forms. In fact, the idea that people are reading less is upsetting me as someone who reads a few dozen books a year – and still feels like crap that I don’t read as much as others.
To wrap in COVID-19, I want to mention that my timeline for everything was a little off. Along with the belief that it would take at least two years (!) to find a vaccine, I was immediately caught off guard with having news available by December 2020. Given that a lot of lockdown procedures were kiboshed by 2021, it does feel like nobody learned any meaningful lessons from COVID-19 with the figures I trusted most outright shutting down programs prematurely. I’ve contracted the virus three times with the most recent case being August 2024. To me, there is a need to keep it in check. The rise of anti-vax sentiments in federally appointed figures upsets me.
More than my writing career inspiring me to process a lot of complicated emotions, it has revealed what the pandemic has caused me to fixate on. For three years I was obsessed with mortality and couldn’t stop writing about death and grieving. It’s only been recently that I’ve broken out of that pattern and noticed how a mix of pandemic, losing a high school friend to an overdose, and the slow demise of elderly family members weighed on me and needed an outlet. I can’t imagine someone choosing to not think about this pain and at least trying to place those hard emotions into more palatable boxes.
Similarly, I might be more disappointed with the world. Along with today marking five years since The Memory Tourist’s origins, this year is the 10th anniversary of when the Republicans put up candidates for the next election and a certain someone admitted on live TV that he wouldn’t be afraid to run as an independent. I bring up this moment because it means that we’ve lived in the modern “fake news” world for 10 years. The division has caused me to reminisce on the time before. Even as I feel like a more confident person now, I wonder about a world where there’s more rationality and empathy, where I feel less bothered by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Sure, there’s a lot I’ve learned on how to be a more compassionate person since, but there is the hope that if a few things went differently, this current timeline would be a little happier.
The best that can be said is that The Memory Tourist turns five with a better understanding of my original prompt now than when I started. Even if my output remains infrequent, I still try to post regularly and give readers a good sense of where I am mentally. Not everything is “about me’ as it was in 2021, but my hope is that it feels like a discussion between friends. Maybe I would love to be more willing to write about topics that don’t interest me and take those type of risks you only take when you’re green, but that’s where my life has taken me. Now I mostly count down the days until Jane Remover’s new record comes out.
Most of all, I feel like my 30s haven’t entirely been what they could’ve been. A lot of it is because of the pandemic and a subsequent depression that swallowed a lot of my attention. However, in that time I was able to graduate from my dream school on the Dean’s List with a Bachelor’s Degree. There’s a lot that I’ve been proud to be part of. I’ve become more engaged with the world around me, more willing to stop and observe new things. I’m less indebted to being online and while that means I’m not entirely sure where I want my career to go, that means I have more places to look than I used to. Here’s hoping that everything comes together by this website’s 10th anniversary, which hopefully will continue to feel far away.
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