a farewell from the publisher catherine powell
“It’s
the oldest story in the world. One day you’re 17 and planning for someday. And then quietly and without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And that someday is yesterday. And this is your life.”
Nathan Scott said that during the final scene of One Tree Hill, and it’s stuck with me all these years. I started NKD when I was 17, which most people find impressive. Personally, I find it naïve – but only in retrospect. But at the time, I had a plan. Over the course of the last eight and a half years, the plan I made in a fifth floor, Washington Heights walk up apartment at 2:00 a.m. on a Friday night during my junior year of high school has been registered so obsolete I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it was – but I know it was big. This magazine was always supposed to be my stepping stone to bigger and better things – that I know for certain. In many ways, it was. But it has been so much more than that. I’ve dedicated a third of my life to this little publication that could. I’ve given up holidays, relationships and a hell of a lot of sleep to keep NKD afloat. I poured everything I had into it, and if we’re being honest, there were days when none of that felt like enough. Sometimes it felt like we were publishing into the dark void of the internet and all the work I had done would be registered irrelevant by morning. Sometimes I was right about that. But more often than not, I felt like we mattered.
