“Politics on a Frame” has not been an appropriate title for this newsletter for a long time (about a year), so I’ve changed things up.
When I started this Substack in March 2023, framing had been an intense academic interest of mine for maybe two months at that point. I also wanted a platform to talk about politics, so I made my own, publishing weekly content on every political topic under the sun. My obsession with framing then became the excuse I needed to travel that summer, where I tried my best to fit my experiences into the academic box I had drawn for myself — I now happily realize that I failed to do so.
For a while now, I recognize that this newsletter has been a random mishmash between shower thoughts, travel reflections, political work, and happenings that I don’t know how to categorize in a very compartmentalized world. So I’m finally refocusing this newsletter to reflect that.
I’m temporarily calling this substack “dispo-thoughts” (happy to take suggestions, it’s a work in progress), with the following description: “crossing lives, dotting t's, writing out the thoughts that would otherwise be undeservedly disposed, never to be seen again.”
I feel that my ultimate privilege in life is that I’ve been able to live many lives at once. I’m a student who attends two world class universities, and just studied abroad at a third. I’m a religious agnostic who has now completed two pilgrimages. I study math but write speeches and poetry. I have traveled solo across Europe and Southeast Asia.
So just like any other human (as we all live between the lines), I believe that our ‘disposable’ thoughts are anything but if only we gave ourselves the confidence to share them out loud. This doesn’t excuse lies or misinformation — it encourages a healthy experimentation that is the bedrock of fulfilling discourse.
Freeing myself from political requirements will also allow my writing to become more personal, which I’ll gladly embrace. The thoughts I’ll share here from now on will not be as airbrushed as my initial pieces (for those who have been with me since the beginning), which were rhetorically shiny — there are too many other writing-related projects taking up my time. The tone will instead be more casual, with the goal of stringing together conversations between the different worlds and personalities I’ve been lucky enough to experience.
So anyway, this might make it easier for me to publish a bit more often. I’m hoping to write something about the three weeks I’ve been spending in Japan, under this new framework. Stay tuned!