Beautiful Humans,
In this email I’d like to introduce the Curious Mail, but first a little back story.
I had finished about 80% of the content for the first issue of the Curious Tribe digital magazine and plotted out the next 12 issues… then He Who Shall Not Be Named was elected President of the United States of America.
I was already reeling from a breakup with my longterm boyfriend and the reality of this massive step backward for our country threw me into a sadness unlike anything I had ever experienced.
I was on total autopilot for 3 full days. I flew to New Jersey for a Dear World photoshoot and listened to the stories of college students and faculty trying to process Hillary’s earth shattering loss. I smiled when I was supposed to and gave genuine hugs to people in pain, but ignored my own feelings for fear that they would leave me unequip to do my job.
When I finally got home, I crawled into bed and stayed there for 6 days, only getting up to find fast food and make cocktails. I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone and discovered Desperate Housewives, an ABC show on Hulu with 8 seasons chock full of drama and intrigue. The perfect distraction.
I slept. I cried. I mourned my losses.
And on the seventh day, I got up. There wasn’t a miraculous healing. I was absolutely not okay. I was actually genuinely depressed. But I needed to throw myself into a project. I needed to make something, so I could work through my feelings. So I built and launched the first issue of the Curious Tribe magazine online. I even built a fully functioning iphone app, but held off because I knew I wasn’t quite ready. The idea was close but not quite where I needed it to be.
While I was in bed those days, I kept coming back to the same question: How do we change the hearts and minds of people that make their decisions from fear and in the worst cases hate?
That question has haunted me for months and to this day I still don’t have a solution. But I discovered something that I knew to be true along the way. These are scary times and many of us are living our day to day lives feeling like zombies. For months, I was one of those zombies.
We have to stay engaged; we have to stay informed; and we have to continue to resist. But even in these troubling times, I decided that one valuable form of resistance is consistently spreading joy. People need to smile. People need to feel affirmed. People need to feel empowered to build their happiest life.
Curious Tribe started because I wanted to redefine the idea of a traditional magazine and that goal still remains. Over time, however, I’ve realized that the real mission is to inject a little joy into your everyday life.
In business, this is called a pivot, when you abandon the initial concept to work on Plan B. Initially, I wanted to create a digital experience that helped creative professionals grow their business. Right now, I think there’s more value in creating an offline experience that spreads some much-needed love in the world.
Curious Mail is designed to delight, encourage and intrigue.
Every month you’ll receive a surprise delivered to your doorstep:
- a beautiful art print
- 2-3 amusing cards
- our motivational newsletter
- and a small gift
It’s $19 a month or $45 for the quarter.
The big thing for me personally is that I will be moving from curator to creative by designing and illustrating the majority of the content. (Below is a collection of work from the past few years.)
