Who Am I, While the World Burns?

I inhabit three worlds, each pulling me in different directions. This blog, where I write about technology, culture, and media’s future, is a space where I should be free to explore ideas. Signalvs, my media and marketing startup, where clients depend on me for strategy and growth while the world burns around us. And The Index, my independent news site dedicated to covering the intersection of technology, politics, and power — where the stories that matter most often hurt the most to write.

I run Signalvs, and I run this blog you’re reading right now because I’m passionate about my work, but also because I need to eat, because I need to build something sustainable.

Each morning, I wake up and ask myself: Which fires do I fight today? Which platform gets my attention? Which audience do I serve?

Everything I do right now is a careful dance between pragmatism and principle. My clients need strategy. They need someone focused and professional. That’s a low bar to meet.

But my inbox fills with death threats while I’m writing pitch decks. My hands shake during client meetings as my phone buzzes with news of another anti-trans bill.

My mind keeps drifting to the stories that sit half-written while I help a startup (yes, run by incredible folks and, yes, doing incredible things) optimize its content strategy. How do you balance building a business with documenting the collapse of democracy?

I feel like I should be spending all my energy covering Trump’s latest assault on democratic norms, another attack on transgender rights, one more step toward authoritarianism. Instead, I’m pitching clients. The guilt feels like lead in my stomach. Who am I to write about venture capital while the world burns? Am I just one more grifter if I take a day out of the chaos to try and grow something of my own?

It creates a unique form of cognitive whiplash. One moment, I’m analyzing media trends for clients; the next, I’m documenting the steady erosion of civil rights and answering DMs from folks in my community who are in crisis and slow-bleeding as they are erased from the United States. The mental gear-shifting leaves me dizzy.

My readers tell me they rely on The Index. They come for clear-eyed analysis of complex systems and Trump and Musk’s fuckery. But lately, everything feels personal. How do you maintain journalistic distance when discussing policies explicitly designed to erase people like you? How do you write dispassionately about fascism while fascists fill your inbox with threats?

The traditional answer would be something noble about journalistic duty and speaking truth to power. But that answer feels hollow when you’re staring at your budget spreadsheet, trying to figure out how to keep the lights on while covering stories that have already driven away advertisers (my podcast last year found no sponsors because I was considered “too controversial”) and angered potential clients. Running an independent media operation in 2025 means constantly balancing ethical imperatives against financial realities.

The worst part? The bad guys want this. They want folks like me exhausted, distracted, and resource-depleted. They want independent media voices silenced not through direct censorship but through the slow strangulation of burnout and financial attrition. Every hour spent worrying about business operations is an hour not spent investigating their latest schemes. Every moment of self-care feels like a small victory for their side.

I remember the day I launched The Index. My mission statement spoke grandly about reimagining how we consume and process information about technology and power. I had such clear ideas about the stories I wanted to tell and the analyses I wanted to write. Trump wasn’t even in office then. The world felt more open, more possible.

Now, each morning brings a fresh arsenal of horrors competing for coverage. Do I write about the latest anti-trans executive order or investigate that troubling new AI surveillance contract? Should I cover the growing authoritarianism in local governments or examine how tech companies are quietly enabling it? Which of Elon Musk’s insane, anti-constitutional, white-supremacist crimes do I carve out time for? Where do I find the space to write the blog posts that will bring me clients and help me pay the bills? Where do I find space for the startup, comms, and productivity writing? Every content decision feels like triage in an ongoing mass casualty event.

Sometimes, I find myself envying other folks I know. The tech bloggers who can still muster enthusiasm about the latest gadget launch. The business writers who track market movements with professional detachment. The startup founders who are “locked in” on their products. Writing about and building things that don’t make you cry daily must be nice.

But then I remember why I started The Index in the first place. I wanted to write about the intersection of technology, politics, and power because that’s where the future happens. That’s where the important stories live. I knew I’d become one of those stories myself. And I knew it would be hard.

Running Signalvs helps keep the lights on. Consulting work pays the bills that reader subscriptions alone cannot cover. But every hour spent on client work feels stolen from more urgent coverage. Every business meeting seems to whisper: “While you sat here discussing marketing strategy, what vital story did you miss?”

The cruel irony? I’m good at the business side. I know how to grow a startup and build a sustainable operation. In another timeline, I might have found real satisfaction in that work alone. But how do you focus on it when democracy might not survive the next election cycle?

My transgender friends tell me to pace myself, to remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. My business advisors tell me to focus more on sustainable revenue streams and worry less about breaking news. My readers tell me they value The Index precisely because it helps them make sense of these intersecting crises. Everyone means well. Everyone is right. And everyone is wrong.

Because there’s no clear answer here, there is no perfect balance between covering the crisis and surviving. There is no ideal distribution of attention between immediate threats and long-term sustainability. There’s just the daily choice to keep going, writing, and building, even when your hands shake and your eyes blur.

Some nights, like last night, I cry at my desk. I cry for the stories I can’t cover, for the people I can’t help, for the life I struggle to build in the shadow of rising fascism. I cry because it feels impossible to do it all and equally impossible to do any less.

But then morning comes. I open my laptop. The cursor blinks, waiting. There are stories to write, threats to expose, andpower to challenge. The Index needs content. Signalvs needs attention. The world needs witnesses. And so I write because what else can I do? What else would I do, even if I could do anything else?

This is not the “career” I imagined. But it’s the one I have, the one I’ve chosen, the one I choose again each morning. Through tears if necessary. Through fear when required. Through exhaustion, more often than not. I work because I need to live, to write. I write because silence is not an option, and neither is surrender. I write because someone has to. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.