happy 1st bday, between the buzz

Happy first birthday to between the buzz, my pride and joy for the past year. It was only a year ago when I was sitting in my parent’s home, sending a test newsletter from “Empathy Engine” (the original name) to my personal email.

I know I haven’t been writing on between the buzz for the last two months, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgone writing. I’ve been doing my morning pages everyday. And I thought, what better way to commemorate a year than to sharing my method to the madness?

how it started

I wrote two newsletters a week about the psychology of money. Which turned into one per week to begin focusing on a magazine concept to share anonymous money stories. Also known as Money Whispers.

Which then shifted my attention to getting personal with random strangers on the streets of NYC. Asking them for their funniest money stories. Or what they thought of when they heard the word money.

At the same time, I was thinking about why there was no good way for Gen-Z to tactically learn about money before they get their first “adult” paycheck? Aha, let fund-u enter the picture.

Yo, multiple names can get confusing…

So in some attempt to combine Money Whispers with fund-u, I consult a bunch of financial psychologists to create a Gen-Z money vibe check test, as a first step to help Gen-Z understand their relationship with money.

Great, this must all amount to this one BIG idea in the grand scheme of things. It all relates back to the psychology of money right? So let’s take this idea that I have no idea what to call to venture capital firms: YCombinator, Sequoia, and Antler VC.

Meanwhile, I somehow also decided I need to enter rooms of founders and creatives. I’ve been so swept up in the tech world, that there must be something I’m missing. So why not interview a variety of people on their relationship with money? Climate activists, founders, supper club creatives.

OK sounds like we should tack on yet another name for this interview series? I like money meets emotions.

I was meeting so many cool people, but when people asked me, what am I working on, I was somewhat at a loss of words. What do I call it? Money meets emotions, Money Whispers, Between the Buzz, or Fund-U?

Sigh, goddamnit. Wtf am I doing? Why does nothing feel like it’s clicking?

And I don’t mean clicking from an external validation perspective. Why did nothing feel like it was clicking with me?

Cue in a good moment to pause and step back to get the necessary bird’s eye view of what I’ve been working on.

I forced myself to relinquish any type of a schedule. No running at 7 am everyday. No work after work. No worrying about the work I wasn’t doing when I was relaxing.

Instead, I renewed my sense of child-like curiosity. I was still running, but instead, it was me running from bodega to home with Oreos in one hand and milk and mac’n cheese in the other. I was sweating through my lehengas to dance my heart out on multiple dance floors. For the first time in a very long time, I discovered play again. In other words, it ain’t that mfking deep. 

I hate when people are right about rest. Because you know that cliché phrase "if you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If not, it was never meant to be?”

Unfortunately, it’s true. Even without writing or interviewing or developing my ideas, the emotional side of money was everywhere. Everyday in May and June, I had at least one friend tell me about a new story where money met emotions. And that’s what it was all about for me: how can we make the conversation around money more inclusive. To include emotions, levity, women, younger folks.

And honestly, I’ve known that why all along. Since I was 8, since I began making big girl money, and since I was interviewing folks 2 years ago in my Gramercy shoebox of an apartment.

But the conversations I’ve had with my family and friends in the last two months made the how click. A clarity I’ve been craving for the last few years.

There is something extremely exciting in the works. Something I can only begin sharing in July, but all I can say is that there is a consolidated focus, and I honestly couldn’t be more stoked to get it out there in all of your hands.

In the meanwhile, here are tokens of advice I’d given to myself after one year of building out my baby: