A Year of Leisurecore
When I began writing for this website a year ago, it was an expression of my love for history. I had just finished reading through 200 years of American history in the form of presidential biographies, and I was desperate to find an outlet to turn the three years of input into output. There was a video I watched that characterized a kind of reader who hoards knowledge in their head but never turns it into anything that can be shared, and I knew that couldn’t be me. I also knew that the medium I was already most comfortable with was the written word. I couldn’t draw to save my life, learning music software gave me headaches, verbally articulating a complex idea took so much focus I couldn't keep eye contact - but I could write a thesis paper.
The feeling of putting words to page, conveying exactly what I wanted precisely how I liked, was a kind of joy I hadn’t felt before. Creating without a college class rubric to grade me and relying only on my own sense of style (with all the pitfalls that came with that) produced what I can only describe self-indulgently as euphoria. My love of history had given way to a love of writing, although it took a while for me to realize it.
I thought I knew what Leisurecore would be when I created it. Do some research about a history topic, make a punchy thesis, make the reader think about the topic differently. Maybe even put “Opinion:” in the title any time I had anything real to say. Most unrealistically, I thought I’d be able to publish an article every month. This meant reading about a topic in-depth, determining if it's suitable for an article, and hoping I can make something out of it by the time I'm finished educating myself - all within the span of a few weeks. Nowadays you’d need to pay me for deadlines like that. As my first foray into public writing I knew the scope would change once I got into a groove, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how shallow that initial groove would turn out to be. The scrapped drafts of history articles in my Google Drive are a testament to this.
On that note, scrapping articles is something I’ve become much more comfortable with. I grew up playing the french horn, and the only fun I ever had was trying the hard scales and pieces in the back of the book (though I did resent having to practice in the first place - no revisionist history here). Not every piece was good enough to be played for the teacher, but that didn’t mean it was a waste of time; even if nobody heard it, music was made. These things take practice, and that’s how I see drafts now. Leisurecore is a portfolio first and foremost, and as such I don’t need to publish anything I’m not proud of. I certainly shouldn’t lament the time spent on pieces that didn’t make the cut. This attitude shift, among many other things, is a work in progress.
Leisurecore is a collection that I hope to build as a reflection of myself. That means experimenting with different styles, voices, and formats that are different from what you have seen so far. It’s not a product so I can’t guarantee the quality of every entry, nor would I ever want to. That said, I hope you continue to read what I publish and pass along your kind comments.
-J.R. Bergman
No AI was used at any point in the creation of this article.