It's Just Me Here

Please keep me company! And then take my old Sassy and Jane stuff off my hands!

The wonderful Casey Steffens took this picture of me a couple of months ago, appropriately at a bar by myself. See more of her beautiful work here.

So here's what's going on. Every single person who works with me on Another Jane Pratt Thing has been out for over a week – all for good and different reasons and I will let them tell you themselves when they return. (See how maturely I am not spilling details about other people's lives?)

For background: in a journal that my dad gave me when I was 15 and on my way to boarding school, I made a list of all the things I wanted to do in my life. One of them, and I know I've said this before, was "start a magazine.” But the key was in little colored-pen parentheses after that: the phrase "(with friends)". Which is what I ended up doing with Sassy magazine, Jane magazine, XOJane, and every other project I've done.

That's one reason working on this site completely on my own, for the moment, feels odd and at least scary enough that I had my classic anxiety dream last night of being late for a flight trying to repack a suitcase while my best friend, Courteney Cox, is right there but on the other side of security so she can’t help me. (Ask me another time to tell you about my recurring dreams involving other famous friends - the one with Gwyneth is particularly amusing and highly recommended.)

So when you see things like this opening image - where I would just LOVE to move that quote line down to sit right above the byline and would LOVE to move that byline flush left - know that I see lacking and problems on the site too and would make them better and fix them if I could figure it out and that I Will Learn. (Canva is not my lover, by the way - though I appreciate them tremendously, they don't seem to fully understand me.)

Lest you think I’m fancy… This messed-up phone is where all of the work for AJPT happens. I think I like to live precariously.

What I do have with Another Jane Pratt Thing (along with some exciting new contributors, like a Music Editor you will definitely know, but not in that capacity), over any other publication I’ve done before, is constant support from and collaboration with you. The stories and messages I get from you are DEEP and - with more than one of us expressing that we saved each others’ lives - mind-blowing. Maybe this closeness comes from the fact that I've known some of you for multiple decades now, so we have that family familiarity with each other. Maybe it's the realization a lot of us seem to be having lately: That the sense of our own true unique greatness that Sassy recognized at 15 is still something we want reinforced at 55?

But back to being all by myself here: I need company! I want to brainstorm and reminisce with you all! I, therefore, want to invite you to my place for our first ever Another Jane Pratt Thing video meet-up. All paid subscribers (even if you just sign up for a month and then cancel right after) are so welcome and encouraged to come. AND anyone who shows up wearing a Sassy T- shirt can win an item from my personal Sassy and Jane memorabilia, including your favorite back issues or whatever of mine from those days you most value.

To top it off, that journal that I mentioned at the beginning of this – along with every other journal I kept from ages 15 to 40 - is in a storage space in New York with a bunch of old clothes and Sassy and Jane stuff. So one or more of you from the meet-up can have the luxurious privilege of coming with me to the storage space one final time to get my journals and that historical Sassy and Jane stuff out and keep as much as you want of it and give away all the stuff you don't want (but there is one cream-colored lace Prada coat in there that I still miss and would look so good on one of you).

So let's set a date and let's see each other SOON. Do you prefer weekends or weekdays?