Letter from the Editor

I'LL TRY ANYTHING ONCE

‍
The demo version of The Strokes' song “You Only Live Once” starts with a sharp inhale before Julian Casablancas croaks the line “ten decisions shape your life, you’ll be aware of five about'' over a war-bling electric piano. I have always loved the simple truth in that line; our lives are dictated and, later, defined - to a surprising extent - by a handful of choices and, for most of those moments of inflection, we don’t come to recognize their significance until much later.

Deciding to move to a new city, to go to a particular college, to quit a job to start your own business — these are the kinds of decisions that have unmistakeable heft, that you know will constitute a milestone in your life. But for every one of those roaring flash points, there’s also the incidental dinner party you said yes to, an article you read, the new cafe you stopped into — seemingly minor events that years later, through the lens of hindsight, you recognize as those that shaped your reality.

In 2007, I started a Tumblr for no particular reason. The first post was a photo of me on Halloween, in my office at the time, dressed in the homemade costume I had spent hours making (I was a tree). It’s been 16 years since I posted that photo, and I owe it my entire life. Did I have any idea that the everyday decision to post a photo would change my life? I did not. And yet, my career, my closest friends, my wife, the interests that have become my passions — they all stem from me choosing a username and password on Tumblr dot com on October 31, 2007.

This is the second issue of the Fohr Almanac of Influence and, for this edition, our theme is "Escape" — into and out of things, to a far off destination, or a new identity. My blog was an escape pod to a better, more interesting life; that experience was a radicalizing event that led me to start Fohr with the intent of helping thousands of others to do the same thing.

We can escape to anywhere; it all starts with a decision to go.