I never imagined any of this would wind up sitting on a little island on the internet. I created the first twelve issues of A State of Affairs over the course of a year in 2022 as standalone Pages documents on my laptop — just text boxes, stock margins, and a half-baked idea. I got it as close to what I'd imagined as I could, shared it with a handful of trusted friends, and let it collect dust in the way that anything digital does, by having it sit in a light blue file folder on my desktop.

And so there A State of Affairs sat … more of a notion than an idea put in motion, more like the promise of rain than the rain itself. Those I trusted believed in its voice and vision. I believed I'd eventually hear the first rumblings of thunder somewhere off in the distance … but I was still waiting on the lightning.

I couldn't have told you back then what A State of Affairs would eventually become … that the heat of summer would find me sweating out masthead choices, deciding on the difference between Fit and Fill, or building these sections one by one, sometimes starting over from scratch. Was it ever going to rain?

That's the part that nobody tells you about when you start tinkering with a four-year idea: it doesn't arrive along a line barreling out of the West. The storm line breaks apart, skirts your edges. It often arises on the sixth or seventh version of itself on days when you hadn't even planned for a sudden shower or a deluge. But everything kept building and brewing until you had no choice but to gather everything just before the first drops start pounding against the glass.

So here it is … not the Pages document, not the version I imagined those years ago … this is my line of thunderstorms bringing the full power of its weight to the story. The once dry ground welcomes its arrival.

Welcome to this first Dispatch. There will be many others to follow … and I hope you'll keep looking up with me … to find the sun dancing on the crowded stage of sky, to welcome the cool of the shade, or to stand in the storm letting the rains wash over the shores of this little strip of space where I share the state of my affairs.