2025.

Dear pyre friends,

I’m not normally the kind of person to say “sorry for the hiatus” (jk I’ve been publishing various content online since the early 00s and so am very familiar with apologizing for a lack of updates), but I do want to talk about why it happened. My hope is that it resonates with you. Maybe you’re going through something similar.

I talked a big game last year about getting a merch store up and running. I got some quotes from local vendors, surveyed our subscribers for designs they liked the most, and ordered a few samples to get a sense of quality.

Then the 2024 election happened and I completely disconnected from all media. A month later, my job was eliminated. All unnecessary expenses had to be shut off.

This combo punch of Life is Bad in General and Life is Bad for You Specifically was particularly detrimental, but I did end up thinking of some pie-in-the-sky ideas that never came to fruition:

1. An opera podcast with me and my partner (former opera singer) - he’d discuss the history and context of the performance, I’d provide a bunch of pop culture deep cuts because I’d have nothing else to contribute.

2. A YouTube channel of video essays like “The Evolution of Mario Kart.”

3. Tzatziki business.

4. A small restaurant with a menu of different dips from around the world. I called it “Dipping Things in Other Things,” a name that turned out to be extremely polarizing for everyone who heard it.

I felt guilty that I wasn’t spending more time on Northern Pyre, but it seemed tone deaf to promote it in light of everything else going on. I also couldn’t justify working on it when it wasn’t paying the bills.

I was offered another job in March, which abated some of my anxiety. Things are slowly getting better (at least, in the For Me Specifically category - Life in General is still not good), and have started our first fundraising project. As for the merch, maybe this will be our year.

It’s a scary time, for many reasons. But the great thing about nonprofits is that they cannot be “owned” the way businesses are. Northern Pyre doesn’t belong to me, the board, or anyone else. And in a world where it seems everything can be bought, it’s comforting to know that the idea of a nonprofit is reflective on its humanity, not its profitability.

Thanks for sitting with me,

Ashley