Dear Diary - a note from Mendy

Hello friends, readers, and those avoiding work!

I stayed in bed longer than I should have this morning. I was thinking about all of the things in my life I cannot control – it’s been a doozy of a month for me personally. I started with my children, then old home repair needs, hopped over to ongoing tax difficulties, and then settled on something a little more fun to over analyze – inspiration and creativity. Specifically, regarding Fieldfare and our readers. Even though there’s not a clear delineation between what Skye and I both do (because everything), Creative Director is my title on paper.

I don’t think I ever experience inspiration and I don’t feel creative in general; I just happen to be a bit obsessive about photography and that’s landed me amongst people that work from an internal motivation that I don’t recognize in myself. I’ve approached Inspiration as you would studying. I think that it can be opened like a book when you’ve set aside time and prepared for it. I want it to work on my type A timeline. I often feel with intent focus I should be able to come up with just the right idea. So, in true magical thinking fashion, I began honing my thoughts in on how to save our print journal. I thought about how to find more readers, the role of content, where and how often I should be posting, and the graffiti I saw scrawled on a wall in Shoreditch in 2015 that read “the algorithm is gonna get you.” I thought about those of you that tell us you don’t want to miss an issue, and I thought about those of you that haven’t seen an issue yet.

Realizing that my bed brainstorming was becoming a rumination session that wouldn’t get anything actually done, I finally got up and put on my yoga pants. No, not for that athleisure mom look, for legit yoga practice. Adriene Mischler, whom I know I’ve mentioned before, releases a 30 day yoga journey at the start of every year and today I decided to commit. And so, I did my Day 1 and I only had to tell myself a few times not to think about what comes next in my day. And as much as my inner voice told me that repeating new age mantras is hokey and not for the hard-hearted that usually say things to themselves like “breathe, you anxious bitch” I said them anyway. I softened. And I appreciated again that as an instructor, Adriene rarely takes herself seriously and that’s why today I believed her when she said that just showing up is all you need to do.

Getting to my agenda for the day, I was sorting through photos, thinking about content for Instagram posts (settling quickly on shouting out Issue 2 which I think didn’t get the love it deserved) and looking at our Pinterest account for the umpteenth time, just waiting for the inspiration gods to descend and grant me an epiphany. Well, obviously I ended up distracted by something that led me down an internet rabbit hole that bottomed-out with an article about the founding of Kinfolk magazine. It’s a little out of date, but I kept thinking about it throughout the day. Aside from learning that the founders were Mormons (which explained the initial wholesome aesthetic) and immediately feeling my own personal connection to the ex-mormon demographic and that search to redefine identity and community after being part of something intensely insular – there was a lot for me to unpack.

I think the first thing that struck me is how long it’s been since the magazine skyrocketed to popularity in 2011. Yes, 2011. (Basically an overnight sensation, they were all clearly very young and very overwhelmed by the viral nature of their dorm-room project. I’d guess that majority of people on Instagram knew the #kinfolk before they even knew it was a magazine.) The slow living movement has endured over a decade, so we at Team Fieldfare are very late to the game as far as small batch concept magazines go and, in that regard, not groundbreaking anything. I do think we are not quite like any other publication, but we are obviously lined up on the shelf with some cohorts. I’d say we have a tacit acceptance that our print journal is categorized as slow living, but we tend to talk about it in terms of the thoughtfulness and connection of print that can’t be provided by social media.

Then there’s the creative entrepreneurship observations. It’s comforting? validating? to see that even incredibly successful publications are a hot mess most of the time. That struggle with personal and professional relationships seems inseparable in a small business. We hang out with like-minded folk and then come up with our ideas together. But in addition to managing friendship within business, there’s the challenge of all aspects of life and work co-mingling and not lending itself to any sort of balance. (she types as she yells at the kids to take the dog out so he will stop barking) I’m really bad at keeping “work hours” whatever those are, and it feels like everyone in my family has worked as a Fieldfare intern whether they’d like to or not.

That second paragraph of the article about intentionality and authenticity is where I want to land this unsolicited communication. As ubiquitous and parodied as those terms are now, they are at the heart of expression and the connection we aim for with Fieldfare. We do want to create community. We do want you to feel a part of a space that provides a break and respite from the online pressure to consume places (and people) within seconds. The real conflict is this expression and connection come with a transactional component. And I just don’t know how to navigate that most of the time. It’s a very personal venture for us and for the writers and contributors – we are offering ourselves.

I stopped writing this once dinnertime madness took over yesterday and began today with another mistake – I checked my email and Instagram before yoga. Which means after reading through the list of questions from my tax attorney, my Day 2 could be an account called Angry Yoga. I was so annoyed that I kept being told to close my eyes and I would not be cajoled into saying the “I am in tune” mantra, and when I wasn’t annoyed, I was trying to keep a vulnerability hangover at bay thinking about completing this newsletter/confessional blog post (really I’m not sure either). But I did finish my yoga.

And then I went to a meeting with a good friend (and small business owner) and had coffee and a sausage roll while brainstorming. It was productive and a relief to talk to someone that not only understands the admin challenges but really gets you and what you’re doing. Hearing her take made me feel proud of Fieldfare. We have not been an overnight success and we are not marketing savvy and nobody with any true business sense goes into independent publishing for the money anyway, but we are pouring our hearts and our time into something and it has been noticed.   

Perhaps this is just a season of wintering, or maybe it’s a midlife crisis. Whatever the case, I am willing to show up.