N.A. Ferrell's 2007 photo of cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Photo taken by N.A. Ferrell on April 26, 2007. Edited for publication by V. Gurbo.

This is the “About the Site” page for The New Leaf Journal. This post will explain who we are, what we do, and how we fit in the vast sea that is the internet. You will also find links to site resources and some examples of our most notable content.

I originally wrote our About the Site article in May 2020, and I recently decided that we were due for an update. I revised the About page wholesale on March 20, 2021. I made several updates on July 16, 2022.

Introduction to The New Leaf Journal

We launched The New Leaf Journal, a general interest online writing magazine, on April 27, 2020. Our mission statement is narrow: We write about what interests us, and we work to ensure that all of our content is worth a little bit of our readers’ time. We invite you to turn over a new content-consumption leaf with us, and consider our articles for your morning reading, an afternoon break, or bedtime-fare. While we cordially invite readers to consider us in the midst of insomnia as well, we would prefer that everyone achieve a good night’s sleep.

The New Leaf Journal’s Place on the Internet

The internet has shortage of content competing for all of our time. It has made available to the general public, often free of charge, the corpus of great literature and incisive content by contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers. But for each piece of timeless or pleasant content, there is voluminous content that is neither timeless nor pleasant. From frivolous clickbait to meaningless fluff that exists for no purpose other than to monetize the idle clicks of malaise-ridden computer- and phone-owners, the internet too often has a tendency to direct our attention to things that are not worthwhile. Worse yet, the contemporary glorification of performative online living seeps into the offline world, causing poor outcomes for individuals and for society as a whole.

The New Leaf Journal is a small-but-growing online magazine that is less than a drop in the bucket of the greater internet. We certainly do not expect to solve the issues that I noted above. We do, however, hope to keep our own house clean and to focus on producing interesting content in a variety of areas that always respects the time and attention of our readers. If you enjoy our work, we hope that you consider making us a regular part of your content consumption.

If you like what you see, we encourage you to follow us with your favorite feed reader and/or subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Learn More About Us

Victor V. Gurbo wrote a long article explaining what The New Leaf Journal is back in May 2020. It holds up very well today.

In October 2020, I explained my inspirations for the site slogan, including how the slogan was inspired by a Pokémon town motto.

I try to infuse The New Leaf Journal with my preferences for web design and content consumption. You can learn more about my ideas in the following posts:

These are just a selection of posts wherein I discuss ideas that go into my thinking in designing and maintaining The New Leaf Journal.

What Kind of Content Does The New Leaf Journal Create?

New readers may be a bit confused when they first find The New Leaf Journal. Our very first Guestbook (we no longer maintain a Guestbook) commenter stated that he expected to find a website with Animal Crossing tips. Another reader from May 2020 commented on our Facebook page that she could not discern our site’s purpose. That is fair – most websites focus on a single topic or idea.

We post full articles, creative writing content, and musings from our writers and editors. One look through our 600+ articles – which does not count our Leaflet microposts and newsletters – will reveal that we cover a vast array of often-unrelated topics, including, but not limited to: Society, culture, technology, music, arts, photography literature, history, video games, anime, current affairs, personal anecdotes, and quite a bit more. One section on site – The Emu Café – is dedicated to content centered on the themes of aesthetics and the life lived well.

The Fibers that Link Our Content

Our writers write about what interests them, but carefully craft this content in order to convey those interests and thoughts to readers in an engaging way. It may be unlikely that any individual reader will be interested in every topic that we cover, but we are confident that every reader will find that we cover many topics of interest to him or her. Furthermore, we might suggest that our variety of content presents a good opportunity for people to learn new things about topics they had not previously considered.

It is precisely because we write about a disparate and vast array of topics that we believe that The New Leaf Journal has something to offer just about everyone. From challenging essays to breezy musings, from discourses to creative works, you never know what you may find posted on any given day. Our site’s tag-line 〜Where the leaves are perennially virid〜 was chosen with intent. This tagline articulates the fiber that joins our content together. No matter what we post about on a given day, we work to ensure that the content is meaningful, fresh, and in some cases, evergreen.

Find Content That Interests You

We publish articles on many different topics. While this brings the benefit of having something for everyone, we recognize that finding your something may be a bit tricky. To help you begin your New Leaf Journal journey, I present the following resources.

Thank You For Reading

On behalf of everyone who works on The New Leaf Journal, I thank you for taking the time to read our new About page. We hope that you become a regular visitor here at The New Leaf Journal. If you have feedback on our content and what we are doing, feel free to send us an email.

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