I don't really know how to start this other than honestly.
For a while I didn't feel like a real person. Not in a dramatic way — I wasn't falling apart. I was just going through the motions of being alive and feeling like something essential was missing. Like there was more to living than what I was doing, and I couldn't figure out how to reach it.
I kept looking at the world around me and feeling this strange grief. We are more connected than any humans have ever been. We can reach anyone, see anything, know everything in real time. And somehow that made the distance feel worse. Not better. I would scroll through hundreds of people living their lives and feel further from humanity than ever.
I make art. I write poetry. I always have. And I realized that the things I was making were the closest I ever got to feeling real, like I was actually here, actually present, actually a person with something to say. But I was keeping it mostly to myself. Posting occasionally, moving on. It wasn't reaching anyone. It wasn't reaching me either.
So I started thinking about what it would mean to share the work differently. Not just the image. Not just the poem. But the whole thing - what I was feeling when I made it, what called me to it, what I was trying to hold onto. A letter. Something honest. Something that asked the person reading it to feel something back.
That's what The Human's Mail Club is. Every month I make an oil painting and write a poem and then I write you a letter about all of it. It goes in an envelope and it arrives at your door.
I don't have a grand mission statement. I just know that the moments I feel most human are when I make something true and someone else recognizes it. When the distance closes, even for a second.
That's what I'm trying to make happen. Once a month. One envelope at a time.