Welcome to my new website, launched in the final days of the year that shan't be named. It was supposed to launch way back when at the beginning of the pandemic when I first sat down and bought a domain and a Word Press theme and had the best intentions of launching a blog-meets-portfolio site. It was going to be fun, it was going to be awesome, it was never meant to be. At least not back then. But it is now, so here we are, and here we go.
My name's Steph Wilson, welcome to my blog/portfolio, assuming that's what this page becomes. That's the plan as of now, it sounds like a fun project that will keep me entertained and busy while also entertaining you (hopefully).
What will it be about, you ask? Good question, smart of you to wonder, you don't want to waste your time. I don't want you to waste your time, I don't want to waste your time. I also don't want to say definitively that this will be one thing or the other, because as Tom Wolfe once wrote, "If you label it this, it can't be that." And the only thing that this absolutely can't be is boring. I abhor boring.
Luckily (if not entirely by design) things around here are rarely boring. Some of the things that I anticipate will be covered on this site and any:
Making Magazines: It’s what I do, what I’ve always done, what earns me a livingAnd I’m pretty good at it, Folio: named me one of the top women in media 2020. I’ll probably create a portfolio section with links and PDFs of some of my published stuff, and there may be a post every once in awhile about something I’m working on, but don’t worry—this won’t be like a professional stale sales pitch of my writing skills. I’m bored just thinking about writing that, I wouldn’t ask you to read it.
My Maximalist Tendencies: Instead of starting this blog at the beginning of the pandemic as originally intended when I sat down that one night and bought a domain and whatnot, i didn’t sit back down at my computer to write for months. Months. (I was burned out, I had nothing left to say, I’m sure I’ll get into what that looked like at a later time.)
So yeah I unleashed my creative energy on my apartment, which was already well on its way to being a monument of maximalism. But now it’s a straight up temple. I am constantly rearranging items, playing Tetris with the furniture, adding layers of paint to existing artwork, adding layers and textures and patterns and everything I can find and damn if i haven’t turned an 840-square-foot two-bedroom apartment in Denver overlooking Mile High Stadium into a Land of Make Believe where blank wall space is hard to come by. Which is why I’m planning on wallpapering the ceiling next. Because theres always something to do next.
And not to be all, “So many people have been asking me about my apartment that I had to launch this site” but like so many people have really been asking me about my apartment whenever I share photos on Instagram so I decided, fuck it—let’s write about it in all its chaotic glory.
Because chaotic is the only way to describe it. Chaotic is the best way to describe me, it’s the only way to describe my life. Chaos is where I thrive. Blame the ADHD.
Or actually don’t blame it, thank it. ADHD is my creative superpower and this blog will give you a little window into my adhd brain and the life it creates for me. That’s not a good sentence. But I’m gonna go with it anyway because my god it’s time to get this thing posted already. (I don’t even want to tel you how much time I spent making logos for this site over the last nine months. Today alone I played with versions on Canva for 2.5 hours while riding my Peloton and I’m already sore.)
So yeah we may dive into some fitness stuff in some posts. We’ll almost certainly get into discussions about cannabis, since I’m the editor in chief of the leading cannabis lifestyle media co, which I cofounded upon moving to Denver from Miami in 2015. But before you get all judge-y, you should know I’m not from Florida, I’m from New Hampshire. I moved to South Beach two weeks after graduating with my bachelor’s in journalism from UMass in 2003–followed my sister blindly, I had never been so Miami Beach and didn't have a clue what I was getting into.
And I spent the next 12 years getting into all sorts of things, including the magazine industry, which landed me on a list of the city's Top 30 Under 30 among other fun things. (Don't mistake the perky enthusiasm for ditziness. Or do, you do you, I'll keep doing me.) Which in a roundabout way brings us back here to where we started: I’m going to write about being a magazine-making maximalist in the mile high with a penchant for palm trees. If you like lots of color and chaos, this is the place for you.
It’s most certainly the place for me. I’m excited to show you around.