What a Magazine Can Still Do
What’s old is new again. Mullets, landlines and polaroid cameras are back in fashion. Soon we will dial our besties on our rotary phones, sporting our 90s haircut, and hanging up to pickup our developed film from Walgreens.
A retro hobby I picked up during the pandemic was subscribing to physical magazines. Technically, magazines aren’t retro because they are still being printed and mailed. But to start subscribing to physical magazines in 2021 came off as an oddity to my friends, as I conveyed my plans for the perfect evening of sitting on my couch and flipping through Real Simple and Travel + Leisure. To unplug at home night after night of Omicron, the second COVID wave to knock us indoors for all of January, required a lot of effort. Having already watching all of the Marvel movies, tired from Zooming with Friends, and lacking inspiration in baking cookies for no one, I was at a loss for how to turn off my brain when the work day was done. And with booze cut out of my life in 2019, a glass or seven of wine wasn’t going to do the trick. Why not go old-school and read some magazines, a 20 minute escape through text and imagery, each flip of the page more satisfying than the last.
My desire to truly unplug while reading my magazines meant my phone was in another room, so as not to be tempted to make an Asana task for every interesting book suggestion or put a pin in my Google map of that beautiful hotel in the South of France that was waiting for me when we could finally fly again. Instead, I ripped out the pages and set them aside to triage later. I even ripped out articles for friends, even though I could probably find the related URL and send a text instead. What joy I received in handing Adela a recipe she might like or saving an innovative cat toy suggestion that Sung will surely purchase for Perilla.
With a few magazines coming each month, I felt inspired to make a vision board out of magazine cutouts. The board’s intent wasn’t to visually display a 5-year plan but rather showcase images and phrases that resonated with me. What a great additional use of the magazines since ordinarily I had no plans to use the clippings to send ransom notes.
To expand my vision, I trolled Facebook Buy/Nothing for anyone giving away magazines. I would need more than Real Simple cleaning tips for an inspiring future. Turns out that several people hold on to magazines until they realize that there is no reason to unless you plan to make a vision board or write a ransom note. Just imagine someone needing to write a ransom note and going on Facebook Buy/Nothing in order to get magazines to do it. For those hoarding magazines, perhaps they offered a decorative element in a magazine rack given as a wedding shower gift from a Bed Bath & Beyond registry. But over time, they just collect dust. Magazines have faded into the background, and Bed Bath & Beyond has faded into bankruptcy.
On a cold December day — who am I kidding with that poetic mumbo jumbo because really we were home for the coldest and hottest days during the pandemic, ultimately becoming numb to weather as we sat outside reading in the summer sun and as we huddled under heat lamps in parkas in the winter just to be around people. But on this particular cold December day, one of the quietest days between Christmas & New Year’s when no effort is needed to remain at inbox zero, I grabbed my glossy stack of magazines, my scissors, and my glue stick, and I started the literal cut and paste process, no Control X or Control V needed here. With great music playing, a fresh batch of cookies for no one else to eat, and solitude as I shut my husband and cat out, I found the solace I was seeking in this mundane and retro task.
After finishing my vision boarding on my new cardboard trifold, I slid the board under the couch, resolved to dig it out from time to time when inspiration was needed. A 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment doesn’t lend itself to displaying what looks like a 6th grade project. With the out-of-sight ,out-of-mind fear creeping in, I took a picture of my vision board and set it as my Gmail background. Now, my vision board slapped me in the face with every Gmail login. Over time though, I became blind to the image, my gaze focused instead on the price of my ConEd bill or the drama of not breaking down boxes in the refuse room of my condo building.
The magazines kept coming, and my propensity to rip out pages remained, even though my vision board was already full and ironically collecting dust. When a friend expressed interest in making a vision board for 2024, I enjoyed the idea of flipping through magazines together, but didn’t see myself buying another poster board to live under my couch next to my 15 pound weights and the board game Scrabble, which has not left its box in the 11 years I’ve been with my husband, its original owner.
What’s something smaller than a poster board but sturdy enough to hold glued paper? Well, an artsy notebook of course! Regular composition paper would not suffice. I needed something more like resume paper. For those unfamiliar with resume paper, resume paper is a type of off-white card stock used for printing your resume. You used to go to job interviews in person and bring a physical copy of your resume. And if you really wanted the job, you spent extra money on the special paper because nothing says “I want this job!” more than a trip to OfficeMax, which is now part of Office Depot. I journeyed to Blick Art Supplies, located a block from the shuttered Bed Bath & Beyond and found two drawing books with black paper, the perfect color to make the magazine images pop
A year and a half later, my vision notebook has 171 cutouts across 15 pages, with 56 blank pages left for visioning. From a cutout of a pizza oil that I later received as a gift to a picture of a ski jacket color that inspired a new apres look, to inspiring phrases like “clear out what’s taking up space in your home - and your mind” to one word punches like “escape” and “attention,” this vision notebook is finally in a format that allows me to consume inspiration from my couch, on an airplane, or anywhere the notebook goes.
What is it to be inspired? Is it a feeling? A state of being? Is it something you see or something you are? Whatever inspiration is, I’m fairly confident that it comes and goes, unlikely that any one person is inspired 100% of the time. What inspires me may not inspire you – but chances are both of us have more than one source of inspiration. A person achieving a goal, a snowy mountaintop, or a striking image of well-designed interiors are all sources of inspiration, which may or may not work depending on the person, the day, or the mood.
My notebook remind me that inspiration is everywhere and there’s no shortage or cap on what can inspire me. And leaving blank pages means leaving room to always be inspired.
