What is all this OYB stuff anyway? It looks like a mishmash of books, tiny stories about a guy’s life and a buncha weirdo links. So what’s up?
OYB is my 10-year project to create a general interest magazine that celebrates the everyday life of regular folk. (A brand-new issue #10 is now available.)
The category of “general interest” magazine today is dominated by materials that I suggest has no general interest whatsoever but is merely paid for by the biggest companies. They’re all about celebrity, fantasy and corporations. How’s that general anything?
OK, I don’t dismiss the big mags entirely: they do some good work. They pay the most for the best talent. Bravo. But their formula really does miss a lot of the most important and realest stuff out there.
For one thing, small independent owner-operated business gets shut out of general interest media. They can’t afford to advertise in it. But I think that what they offer would naturally appeal to a lot of people more than what the big corporations are trying to sell.
OYB tends to be about the outdoors, but it also includes plenty of indoor action as well. When people are taking back their lives, doing what they do, where do you find them? –Everywhere but commuting or in front of a TV. Well, we can take those back, too.
Anyway, I publish a zeen and a website that shows a wide range of things that you won’t see put together anywhere else, but which actually, in a rough way, include an approach that you might see in quite a few people’s lives.
I also publish books and resell other people’s work if I find that it adds something to culture which is important and not covered otherwise.
I also promote a variety of projects that likewise reflect an Everyman approach that isn’t so common. Like my wife Martha’s LazyGal fabric arts website. And the ULA literary activism website, designed to promote a return to relevance in literature.
There isn’t much that’s redundant at OYB. I cover what’s left out.
