What Can I Do For You? Pastiche Exists For Its Readers ~ & ~ A GIVEAWAY!

What can I do for you, dear reader? I want to know what you need…

 Pastiche is a very personal journey. I share my life and days with you in an effort to connect with you, dear reader, because I believe that at the bottom there is an existential loneliness in us all and we want to be heard, listened to, loved for all of who we are. I share my experiences because I know that the universal is in the personal, and I give you journal exercises by way of questions and other prompts to help you delve more deeply into your own life, but I want to do more.

I am getting ready to send a special newsletter/loveletter out to my subscribers. I want to ask them what they would really like to see in Pastiche, what would help them, what topics they would like to read about, what questions they would like me to answer, or write about, and I am going to invite readers to send in letters via email that I can publish in the pages of Pastiche so that we can feel a community building, and, too, there is the community I plan to build on Facebook that I mentioned last time. Inotherwords, with Pastiche I want to find out what you want and need and I want to help you get it. Yes, Pastiche is a zine that I am creating for income but it wouldn’t be worth doing if I were not deeply connecting with my readers and feeling that I can be of service, that is the most important thing to me in all of this.

Today I was out, which I rarely am, and I found myself with time on my hands and I did something uncharacteristic, I went to a bookstore/cafe and read and perused periodicals that I love, and I wrote quite a lot — the above picture was taken in the cafe on my outing — and I thought that I wanted to tell you all to “TAKE YOURSELF TO A CAFE.” A bookstore/cafe is best! And gather a pile of periodicals and books that you have been longing to read and peruse them over something yummy to drink. I had an iced Pumpkin Spice Latte and it was divine. Take pictures of your reading selections with your phone camera to glue in your journal later (You don’t have to have any fancy apparatus like all the people with the tiny cameras and printers. I take pictures with my camera and print them out on my printer and cut and glue them in my journal. Works just fine!).

Take a selfie of you on your outing, (I am very shy about selfies but I did it anyway! See above.) Write quotes and marvelous things in your journal that you find while perusing the wonderful things that you can’t buy but want to remember. Make it a date with yourself. I got lots of inspiration for the next issue of Pastiche that I am working on and made mad, wild notes in my graph paper Moleskine notebook with my fountain pen, writing fast and furious like I was riding a wild stallion across the sky making notes on clouds. Here is the one publication that I came home with and I am positively swooning over it. bella Grace ~ Life’s A Beautiful Journey…

… and ideas came flashing by. I have been randomly giving out a handful of Pastiche subscriptions here and there because I want to build my audience so that I can share with many more people. I have decided to do a giveaway right here in this blog post. SO —

To the first 5 people who leave in the comment section: 1) Name 2) email 3) Why you would like to have a subscription to Pastiche… I will send a subscription (Immediately, as soon as I get your name and email address you will have it pronto! I HAVE to have the email address right away and if I don’t that person will be ommitted.) and I will leave this open until the next blog post goes up or I get 5 requests at which point I will cut it off. I need the income but I also need to spread the word. And I have been on the receiving end of lovely things when I couldn’t afford them. This is my way of giving back.

I have been rereading the new pages for the next issue, and re-imagining ways I might do things here. Your input, dear readers, will be of inestimable value and I will be able to meet your needs in a very personal way, more than a publication that puts out what it wants to put out, I want there to be an organic give and take with Pastiche so that it becomes a living thing, full of light and love and warmth, pulsing with gentle energy, its purpose being in large part the weaving of a community of people who need a place to go to feel loved and nurtured, in the pages of the zine, and the closed, secret community on Facebook. I am dedicated to creating safe and sacred space, both in the pages of Pastiche and in our Facebook community. I am very excited about this.

So do write to me with your thoughts, questions, and what you would like to read in these pages if you are already a subscriber and understand the nature of Pastiche. Send me your letters that you would like for me to share (They can be signed with just a first name.) and let me serve you as I have it in my heart to do. This is a blessing, this work, and I do it in prayerful meditation, and while loving and embracing each of you, dear readers. We are creating something very special together. I appreciate your being my partner in the dance.

With deepest love and genuine affection,