Launching: Wayfinder

A writer collective exploring questions that matter

Hi everyone 👋🏾

The last time you heard from me was May 30. As you read that, you may be thinking, “that’s not the bi-weekly cadence we were promised”. 

And you’re right. It’s not, but with good reason — because LOTS has happened since then.

On the day I sent out my last post, I was writing to you heavily medicated. Why? Well, the night before, I made my first trip to the ER and had to get my appendix removed — don’t worry, I’m all good now. I’ve spent the past few weeks focused on my recovery, which has forced me to pause on writing for a bit. 

Now that I’m feeling better, I’m so pumped to finally share the announcement I mentioned in my previous post: I have been building a writer collective called Wayfinder, and today is launch day!

I’ve teamed up with my good friends Harris Brown and Mark Koslow (who have fruitlessly requested to be referred to as ‘legends’ in this post) to work on this exciting new project.

The basic idea: We think the world needs more humble voices writing about and openly discussing life’s biggest questions. And we think doing that together is way better than going at it alone. We’re excited to create a space for us, and other folks, to do just that. We’re calling it Wayfinder — a writer collective exploring questions that matter.

Here’s how this will work: The short of it is that not much will change. We’ll continue to write independently, each as part of our existing newsletters, but now we’ll be doing it with more support and collaboration as writers. Wayfinder will simply be the home for our newsletters and the home for the community we form around our writing. Based on the feedback I’ve received from the Stories by Shiv community, I think you’ll really enjoy subscribing to the other two newsletters as well, The Middle Path and Harris’s Newsletter. Trust me, their writing will be right up your alley. 

How does this impact you: Most importantly though, for you as a reader, you should know that absolutely nothing will change. You will continue to receive this newsletter in your inbox, if you choose.

What you can expect: Moving forward, you can expect to find a whole lot more at Wayfinder, ranging from new writers and publications to different forms of content. We’ll also be the first to admit that this is all a work-in-progress, so we’re looking forward to surprising ourselves along this journey.

I’m ecstatic to finally share this news with y’all, as Wayfinder has been several months in the making. I hope you’ll take a second to read our launch post below, which further details what this means, how it works, and where we’re headed! 

As always, thanks to all my friends + fam for the endless love and support.  

Shiv

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Introducing Wayfinder

Hi there!

Mark, Shiv and Harris here. 

We've been writing on the internet for some time now — here, here and here. We've come to realize that the world needs more voices writing about life’s biggest questions.

Why? Because we’ve found it hard, like really hard, to navigate these questions ourselves.

And it’s through the act of writing that we’ve found we can both best address these questions and ensure we’re even asking ourselves the right ones to begin with. For example, rather than asking “what are our hopes and dreams?”, we may be better served asking “why do we have these hopes and dreams?”. In other words, pushing ourselves to ask why rather than how.

That's why we're joining forces and launching Wayfinder — a writer collective exploring questions that matter.

We’ll get into what a writer collective means shortly, but first...

What do we mean by matter?

It’s the big questions that direct our lives, oftentimes unknowingly.

The touchy feely stuff. The hopes and dreams that you can’t tell your manager. The conversations that trigger your uncle to shift uncomfortably in his seat at family dinner. The “alright, let’s have some real talk” types of discussions.

Happiness, meaning and connection.
Belonging, ambition and wonder.
Authenticity, identity and becoming.

While these topics are universal, we haven’t been able to find a dedicated place to explore them with other people.

And that’s where Wayfinder comes in.

We’re a group of writers here to offer up humble perspectives on topics that matter to us — and that we believe will matter to others as well.

By writing about the questions we ourselves are grappling with, we hope to strike the match for some much needed conversation. And maybe, even make someone else’s path just a little bit easier.

We’re wayfinders — here to navigate our own journeys and provide companionship to others along journeys of their own.

Writing, like wayfinding, is better together

As writers, we know the sheer act of writing is hard. And we’ve learned that writing is even more difficult when it is done alone, just like wayfinding. To combat that, we’ll be doing this together as a writer collective.

Writing as part of a collective provides the opportunity to call on multiple perspectives in tackling these complex, and often abstract, questions. It creates a space where we regularly review, refine and edit each other's work so the quality of our writing — and the resulting conversations around these topics — naturally improves. Most importantly, it allows us to build community in tackling some of life’s toughest topics.

What you can expect to find at Wayfinder

Here are the publications you'll find writing for Wayfinder today:

• The Middle Path: A biweekly download from Mark Koslow focused on books, meditation, personal growth, and wrestling with life’s big questions

• Stories by Shiv: Biweekly synthesis by Shivani Shah looking at patterns across seemingly unrelated narratives as a way to develop a deeper understanding of the world around us, and ultimately, the life we live

• Harris's Newsletter: Regular ramblings from Harris Brown about the process of becoming

Each of our publications sends out its own regular newsletter. As a reader, it’s totally up to you to decide which publication you’d like to subscribe to. This could be any one of them, or (we hope!) all of them. By housing our newsletters under Wayfinder’s collective model, we hope to add depth, nuance, and color to the topics we’re writing about. 

Moving forward you can expect to find a whole lot more at Wayfinder. New writers, publications and topics. Different forms of content, like interviews and podcasts. And collaborations amongst the Wayfinder team. We’ll also be the first to admit that this is all a work-in-progress, so we’re excited to surprise you, and ourselves, along the way.

Wayfinding alone is hard, so get involved

Wayfinding is harder alone, so if any of this resonates and you'd like to get involved, we would love to hear from you. 

Also, come say hello on: Twitter | Instagram