It is a truism that writers need deadlines. And it’s certainly true that the three of us co-conspirators have needed deadlines to write more regularly. We found our deadlines, for a little while, by writing at The Pastry Box. When they finished their fantastic run, we immediately started talking to each other about some way to keep writing and keep giving each other and ourselves deadlines.
It was good to have an outlet for the kind of writing that lived there: writing about the personal and the professional, about how our lives—personal and professional—intertwined. Sure, we could write on our blogs, we could write on Medium, but we wanted something more.
And we wanted to read that kind of writing more from other people, not just from each other or from ourselves. We wanted the feeling of growth, surprise, and empathy that comes from hearing someone else’s stories and realizations.
In talking about it (or rather, sending emails, Twitter DMs, Slack messages, and co-editing a Google Doc) we realized that we had a vision that was more detailed and specific than we’d planned on!
The name was the hardest part, as it always is. For several months, it was just called Electric Boogaloo, because a part 2 of anything is always Electric Boogaloo? Then it was the unnamed project, and finally, while Anne was on her way to something, running on three hours of sleep, she threw a ton of name ideas out, and then looked for domain names that were kind of close. Much to our surprise, theinterconnected.net was available, and perfect.
We are interconnected in complicated webs of professional and personal experiences, and our personal and professional selves are just as interconnected. The time we live in, of emails and texts and Skype and WhatsApp, of tying people in formerly remote parts of the world together, of the voice of the people sharing recipes and toppling corrupt governments at the same time, is one where we delight—and strain—at the new connections forming between us.
The Interconnected is here to explore what these connections mean, not from a technical view, but from a human view, and how each one of us is learning to live a little better in an age where interconnectedness is the rule, not the exception.
So, welcome.