It has been a very long while since the Modcast has been active, we know, we know. Ironically, we have gotten together a few times to discuss our direction and schedule, and then these plans just sort of faded away, like the light in Boromir’s eyes after his valiant, redemptive sacrifice. (I’ve been watching Lord of the Rings a lot lately.)
These past couple of years have been rough for everyone, the Modcasters included. The pandemic is ongoing and human rights crises are rampant. For me, it’s hard to know where I should direct my attention, how I should prioritize or balance my social justice work and self care practices with my two jobs and full-time studies. I’ve experienced several major depressive episodes and am still battling a lack of motivation. A general and pervasive numbness has settled over me.
It’s hard to know what to write here.
I will just tell you, for my part, why I have not been more active with the Modcast and what my vision is for moving forward with it.
I am disappointed with myself. When the Modcast first started publishing content, a lot of the output and site management was my work–my thoughts and recommendations, and my design and formatting decisions. I was able to pour a lot of myself into the Modcast because I believed in its mission to be as accessible as possible for people of all sensory orientations. But somewhere along the way I got tired. I started wandering away, then stopped altogether producing and scheduling content.
I moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Gallaudet University, where I’m currently working on a master’s in Deaf Studies. D.C. is super expensive. I don’t recommend living here unless you have, y’know, money. That’s why I’m working two jobs in addition to full-time studying. I feel like I have no time to spare for even things I feel are important. In the past, I was a prolific review-writer on Goodreads. I would legit write essays about the books I read. Now I just rate it however many stars I feel are right and move on. I just feel like there’s no time for it, and I have no energy.
Everything is moving too fast for me to keep up. The world runs on what I call corporate time, a mechanism of the brutal American capitalism created to maximize profits at the expense of human beings and natural resources. What we need is crip time, a conception of time where individuals work and learn at their own pace. There is no standard, because everyone is different. Only the individual knows their own limits and needs.
So yeah, if everyone and everything could just slow the F down, that would be great.
On the bright side, I have been making great progress on my thesis, which is entitled “More or Less Hearing: Representations of Deafness in Marvel Comics.” You know after I graduate in May 2022 I’m definitely going to share this out. Maybe I could even get it published, with extensive revisions, but more likely I’ll make it free on some platform or other. Maybe here on the Modcast, where I could make it a series either by character or theme (lipreading, assistive hearing technology, etc.). So you’ve got that to look forward to!
Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been active on the Modcast for a bit.
Now, at the risk of this post getting too long for anyone to have time to read, I want to share my vision of the Modcast moving forward.
Obviously, I want to write more content, but at a slower pace. In the past, I had scheduled posts every Tuesday and Saturday. We can’t do that anymore. It’s too stressful. Maybe two blogs a month is more manageable for us.
I also want to put out more podcast episodes–as this is, in fact, the reason the Modcast was founded. The problem is that we struggle to find a common time to get together and record. Some of us are in different time zones, and most of us are full-time students in addition to having one or more jobs. So, maybe one episode a month or every two months is more manageable, especially if two or three of us get together rather than the full group. Maybe we can also do solo episodes.
My vision of the Modcast is one that embodies accessibility–and this now includes working on a crip timeline.
I hope you all are doing well, despite everything.
Stay tuned!
Leigh Ann
Modcast -- Accessibility, Literature, and Mustachios 
