Laying out my second print title for my day job, so I brought home a few old WSJ magazines from the office to study them and use them as references. Flipping through them made me think about my old boss from my previous job, who taught me so much about publishing and a deep appreciation for the printed world I still carry with me to this day (and honestly made me really love what I do). We used to go on Google Meet syncs in the middle of the pandemic to geek out on editorials and titles she’d introduce me to, and would often lend me copies from her own archive, almost like a shared library of all the good stuff.
I often wish for people to have some version of her at some point in their lives who, in my case, taught me the real value of ‘seeing’ and the countless turns of phrases that stay with you forever like ‘notice what you’re noticing.’ I mark the passage of that time in my life as feeling more awake since then.