Diary #6 - The future of this blog

Despite the clickbaity title, Fandom Archives will forge ahead but I need to make some changes

Now that Fandom Archives is approaching its first birthday, I felt it was necessary that I reflect on the experience a bit.

Starting this blog was a huge milestone for me. Writing has always been a part of my life, but I abruptly stopped in 2017 (being in an abusive relationship is not a very fertile ground for creation). Aside from my bookstagram posts, I didn’t write anything until I began posting here. It felt amazing to stretch my writing muscles again, but I quickly realized I was out of practice with planning, setting boundaries, and knowing my creative limits. While I found the process fulfilling, I also struggled a lot.

It’s time to admit that I bit off more than I could chew with everything I planned last year. If you’ve been following my posts, you probably noticed how late my monthly highlights became, which was a symptom of the larger issue. The blog was born under specific circumstances, as in I was newly unemployed last January. Back then, it didn’t seem unrealistic to think I could write something new every week. My original vision included monthly lists of my favorite kpop releases and diary entries about personal topics, while also writing in-depth essays about fandom and kpop-related issues. I still think I could do it if I just didn’t have… a job.

A tough decision

What this means in practice is that I decided to stop Kpop highlights. I’ll miss it—it was something I truly wanted to do. Early last year, it seemed manageable, but now I just don’t have the capacity. I brainstormed alternative approaches to make it more sustainable, even considering letting my readers choose the format, but I don’t think partial solutions would give me the time I need to steer this blog in its intended direction.

The only compromise I was able to come up with was still posting the playlists with my monthly favorites if there’s interest. They only take about 15 minutes to create so that’s pretty manageable. I think I would feel empty if there was no summary whatsoever of the releases I enjoyed.

My original mission

This blog was always meant to be a space where I could explore the positive, transformative sides of kpop fandom and publish longer-form content. What I’ve done so far was great writing practice after such a long time, but I want to write essays about a hundred different topics that all require research and a considerable time investment. Kpop highlights was supposed to be a side project, something like a filler while I worked on more serious pieces; what I didn’t expect was that I would have NO time at all for anything else.

Here’s a bit of a teaser of the things I plan to write:

• Personal essays about why I love kpop so much, what I believe its true purpose is, and how it’s made my life better.

• A series of essays that would each have a specific song in their focus and where I would break down how their lyrics connect to my personal experiences.

• Long-form essays that would examine the concepts and messages of groups that I’m fascinated by and who have very coherent careers and discographies.

• In-depth reviews of my most cherished albums.

• Fandom culture and misogyny, ‘gender contamination’.

• Queer messaging and symbolism in kpop.

• A series of essays about what constitutes the ‘craft’ of an idol with some recently controversial topics in the focus, such as live singing and self-producing.

• Challenging the “dark side of kpop”, as portrayed in mainstream media.

• An essay (or series) about multistanning culture.

• An essay about the ways different types of fans relate to and consume kpop.

• Some essays about the history of kpop (a few ideas: kpop generations, how feminism became part of girl group concepts in such a patriarchal society, techno-utopian concepts in 1st gen kpop and how it’s coming back, etc.).

• Will continue doing my diary entries about personal topics unrelated to kpop (like being queer, health, and trauma, among many others).

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it gives you an idea of the direction I want to take. It will be more challenging than what I’ve done so far and I’m a bit stressed by the idea, mostly because some of these will require serious research I’m not sure I’m equipped to do and some of them will demand a more artistic style of writing which doesn’t come natural to me when I have to work every day and I’m constantly tired.

As I mentioned, I wanted to publish something every week but I know it’s not realistic, especially with how complex these topics are. I will probably post once or twice a month (at most!) but that will be a more comfortable pace and I’m hoping to create more substantial content.

I still want to publish some lists, too! For example, to highlight underrated songs that fit into certain themes, compile a list of my favorite choreographies, or do a survey of groups that have debuted in the past 2 years and I still haven’t checked out. Media roundup will also remain a staple, whenever I have enough things to write about. I want to allow myself to still do more lighthearted stuff and things that take up less of my brain capacity.

I can’t stress enough that I’m sad to make this decision because honestly, I want this to be my job. All I want to do every day is write lists and essays, recommend kpop, react to things that happen in the industry and so much more. Last year, I wanted to start a podcast/radio too, but it’s out of the question right now. Unfortunately, I need a totally unrelated (and very exhausting) day job to finance this, so I will need to be smarter about how I use my energy and time.

ADHD brain & creating content

Another different problem was that I wanted to prove to myself that I had an endless capacity for content creation and I could effortlessly have a constant output, which, looking back, was a pretty dumb assumption. I realized that there wasn’t anything in the world I have an endless capacity for and I guess that’s okay. As a result, as much as I burned out in work in the years before my layoff, now I managed to burn myself out in my creative pursuits—which I previously didn’t even think was possible. Since my brain craves a constant, neverending stream of stimulation due to ADHD, I mistakenly believed that it also had the capacity to create tirelessly. I thought my ADHD brain was a beast made for intellectual activity but it turns out it’s quite normal in the sense that sometimes all it needs is rest, like any other brain.

Effort ≠ Rewards

In all of 2024, I put a lot of effort into things that barely produced any rewards. By this, I mean both my bookstagram and this blog. While everyone likes to make it seem like followers and likes don’t matter, I disagree, simply because they are the indicators that people are interested and care. I acknowledge that different people have different goals with their social media presence but mine has always been to put my thoughts out there and find a receptive audience.

My bookstagram doesn’t thrive due to algorithms and my Substack is focused on too niche of an interest. Most kpop fans are simply not interested in hundreds of different artists or want to read in-depth essays about kpop, and those who want to read in-depth essays rarely care about kpop.

So the energy I’m putting in is not paying off; I find myself being anxious about reaching the goals I set for myself and having even less time for other hobbies. There’s no real solution to this, I’ll just have to keep hoping that one day I’ll find my audience, no matter how small it is. But crafting a bookstagram post for 4 hours only to have 30 people see it, or working on a Substack post for weeks, only to have no one comment on it can really make a dent in one’s confidence.

A different crisis

This is a separate issue, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about it here, but it’s also part of the bigger picture, so I think I need to.

Recently, I’ve started second-guessing myself and losing confidence in how much I truly know about kpop. I’ve been a fan since 2015 (though for the first 2.5 years, I only stanned BTS and casually listened to a few other artists), but I keep feeling like I don’t know enough.

This feeling stems largely from the fact that I consciously avoid stan Twitter, kpop Reddit, and kpop news sites these days. There aren’t any serious kpop news outlets—only tabloids—and engaging with those spaces used to take a huge toll on my mental health. It took me a long time to reach this point, but I realized I needed to implement drastic measures to protect myself after spending years consuming those sources daily.

The downside is that avoiding them means I inevitably miss a lot of important news or crucial information.

I recently stumbled upon a tweet (I still go on Twitter, but I’m very mindful about what I seek out) where someone created a timeline of every major event that happened in kpop in 2024. I was shocked to realize how much had happened that I knew nothing about. Like, how did I completely miss the Hanteo poop incident? I know it’s a ridiculous thing to feel FOMO over, but it signals how even things heralded as “going down in fandom history” can fly completely under my radar.

That’s when the self-doubt kicked in: how can I aspire to be a kpop scholar if I don’t even know about so many major events from the past year (and, yes, the other events were much more significant than the poop thing)? Writing commentary on contemporary culture is always challenging but staying informed about kpop is particularly difficult because the news is so tabloid-like, and fandom spaces online are a minefield. On Twitter, one post will be a heartwarming thread about your ult idol’s cute habits, and the next is someone wishing for their death in graphic detail. Encountering that kind of content daily did terrible things to my anxiety, so I had to distance myself for self-preservation.

At the same time, I feel that so much of both mainstream media and fandom discourse about kpop revolves around negativity, scandals, and controversies. The very reason I created this blog was to counterbalance that—to focus on the bright, life-changing aspects of kpop fandom. But writing profoundly about kpop without addressing its “dark sides” (a phrase I truly detest) feels almost impossible.

This leaves me with several possible paths—or perhaps a combination of them:

• Stay more informed about what's going on in kpop while trying to figure out how to not take mental damage in the process.

• Continue doing what I’ve been doing, but risk missing essential information and occasionally writing something that isn’t fully supported by reality. Or maybe fact checking on a case-by-case basis could work here.

• Stick to my mission of focusing on the transformative aspects of fandom and kpop on this blog.

• Or abandon that mission and take a more “realistic” approach. But honestly, every kpop outlet I know already does that, and I don’t want to follow what everyone else is doing. Someone needs to keep the delulu alive, right? (Just kidding!)

For those who might be scratching their heads and thinking, “Why is this even a question? Of course, you should prioritize your mental health—it’s just kpop,” I want to reiterate: I regard thinking and writing about kpop and fandom as my calling and my life’s mission. So the way I approach these topics isn’t trivial to me.

I know prioritizing my mental health is the right thing to do—it’s advice you can never go wrong with. But at the same time, I don’t want to fall behind or risk having my blog become irrelevant.

This was a very long explanation of basically one thing: I’ve lost confidence in my voice, my mission, my knowledge, and what I’m doing here. But despite that, I’ll keep going—I just need some time to think more about how to approach this problem.

Upcoming posts and feedback

Since I’m a completionist, I still want to finish some of the things I’ve started. Here are a few projects that are already in my drafts, finished to varying degrees, and that I plan to publish before transitioning to the new system:

• Kpop highlights for October

• Kpop highlights for November & December

• A.C.E concert review

• A roundup of my favorite performances at 2024 kpop award shows and year-end festivals (still unsure if I’ll do this)

• The 50 best kpop songs of 2024 (again, not sure if I’ll do this even though it was fun last year)

Is there still any interest in this type of content? Please let me know in the comments—feedback on this would be incredibly helpful.

And what do you think about all this? I’d love to hear from everyone, but especially from those who’ve read most of what I’ve written here so far. As you can probably tell, I’m in a pretty fragile place in my journey as a writer/content creator, so any encouragement or constructive feedback would mean the world to me.

As always, if you’ve read this far, I love you 💜