There’s a point in every project—every real project—that feels less like a creative sprint and more like a crash course in everything you thought you already mastered. I know how to manage a project. I know how to be the operational wizard, the administrative glue, the person who gets things done. And I know how to do it all well.
But doing it while also navigating the funhouse mirrors of underemployment, the scavenger hunt for permanent residence, and a socio-political climate more hostile than any I can remember since my pre-Clinton youth? Well, that’s an entirely different beast.
It’s the embodiment of what Isabel Wilkerson describes in Caste—the sheer amount of energy wasted just navigating the world. She recalls the emotional labor of calming herself after being harassed by TSA agents, energy that should have been spent preparing for an interview. This is the emotional tax, the invisible invoice that’s impossible to explain to those who’ve never had to pay it. For them, these interactions are exceptions, easily explained away. For so many of us, they are the air we breathe in an America that feels entirely different.
And right now, in 2025, it feels like we’re all breathing different air. I look around and recognize almost nothing. The only constant, it seems, is the pay rate for my labor. My own life has become a satirical performance piece on the very topic I’m researching: the spectacular, unpaid, and underpaid labor of Black women.
I’ve long said that our economy can no longer sustain our culture. One rewards greed and malice; the other pleads for freedom and joy. The nation’s true values have been laid bare, and it turns out, we don’t much like what we see. It’s the final scene of a slow burn we’ve documented for generations. A generation went to war, came home, and got to work. Their kids got to work and stayed there. Now, their grandkids are being told there’s no more pie, just the crumbs of a promise. We’ve been fed so many lies to justify the political and economic machine that we just keep our heads down and go to work, because what else is there to do?
But 2025 has been a violent reminder that we can’t just keep our noses to the grindstone. We can’t stay in our bubbles. Choices are being made for us, whether we participate or not. We have to make the hard ones ourselves.
And choices have been made. This month, amidst the chaos, things happened. Big things.
- I submitted my first manuscript.
- I sent my first article for peer review.
- I gained a fantastic new partner for the project.
- I started in full swing as an Associate Producer for Artist Magnet.
- I chose the ten historical anchors for Labor Pains (though I’m admittedly wavering on one, debating a swap for someone equally fabulous and perhaps a touch more aligned).
The themes of this project are screaming from every screen—wealth disparity, DEI theatrics, wage discrimination, and cultural appropriation. Labor Pains is painfully relevant because a bubble is about to burst, and the canary in the coal mine is the 300,000 Black women who just lost their jobs.
So, I had a brilliant idea: a special workshop preview for a curated group of potential partners and supporters to demonstrate proof of concept. I have a date. A time. A location. I even have the invite list, painstakingly cultivated from events and mutual connections. The email drafts are written. The call scripts are ready. All I have to do is hit “send.” I can describe this project in my sleep. I am here. I have arrived.
So why do I feel so… meh?
This is the valley of the work. It’s that dangerous, unglamorous middle ground where the initial adrenaline has faded, and the finish line is still a shimmering mirage. It’s an abyss of tasks that feel both urgent and unending. I’ve been talking, writing, and breathing Black women and capitalism for almost a year, ever since I submitted the first proposal on my birthday. That grant was eventually pulled as the political landscape shifted, but the project had already taken root in my creative soul. It became a way to process my own trauma and step into the liberated version of myself I’ve always been striving for.
Now, it feels like the rest of America is just catching up. And as always, when things get bad, the country does what it does best: find the mule, kick the mule, blame the mule, and then kick it some more.
Meanwhile, the labor continues behind the scenes. The biggest project is at home, course-correcting misogynistic ideas my son has started to absorb from the ether. My new motto: it’s no longer enough to raise our Black boys to respect women; we must raise them to protect women. After a year dominated by the shadows of Diddy and Epstein, it’s clearer than ever that Black girls and women deserve protectors. Not because we are incapable, but because we are human, and our dignity deserves to be defended.
This is my other unpaid labor: fighting the shame of not having a “perfect” son, even when I know he is incredible. Trying to be the head of household my wife desires. Juggling gigs as an artist, researcher, administrator, and instructor, feeling my compensation is a poor reflection of my intellect. Working around the clock, yet always finding just enough for what we need, but never quite enough for what we want.
I am making plenty of mistakes. Every single day. But I am pushing forward.
This is the part of the journey where you have to remember why you started. It’s not enough to have a brilliant pitch. It’s not enough to be passionate. You have to be able to look yourself in the mirror, past the exhaustion and the self-doubt, and say, “I am doing something meaningful.”
I have spent enough time in the archives to draft the literature review. I have the argument, and I have the evidence. I have built an audience for something that did not exist—a website that grew from 7 visitors in January to over 200 today. This thing that began as an unfunded idea in my head is now real.
Sometimes, you’ll be the only one who sees it. And in the valley of the work, that has to be enough.
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