Hi there.
My name is Taylor.
I destroyed myself on purpose to finally build things I give a fuck about. From my novels, to brands and businesses, to this newsletter—and beyond.
To be upfront, I’m a writer who dwells a little too long in her mental labyrinth, and not quite enough within the mural of her subconscious. She holds a chisel, but has crafted many half-finished palaces and watched them shatter in the same breath. She’s sold her rights to be an artist without understanding the cost, and is now on a mission to gain those rights back.
In other words (see? I get ahead of myself and away with the vision, but maybe you’re the same), I have many dreams, many aspirations, and many micro and macro obsessions that deserve explored, understood, and dissected with both scatterbrained creation and surgical precision.
But, my story isn’t the one that matters here.
(At least, it’s not the only one)
I needed a place to document my explorations of a personal and very important quest—a quest to build a mind, identity, and a body of work I’m proud of across all the mediums I’m deeply obsessed with, from writing fiction, reading quality literature, studying art of the past and future, and building within entrepreneurial fields I care about with ravenous hunger.
The Oyster is, at it score, a place for my unapologetic, raw, and unhinged letters to find a home—a personal column for other generalists who feel the same. But, it’s also a growing media brand and publication for people who prioritize creation over complaining. For people that value humankind and believe in open discussion. For people that deeply understand the importance of individual shaping in a reality where collectivist idealisms are taking souls hostage everywhere. For people who love without restraint, who question without fear, and who yearn for impactful creation in a canvas of uninspired hallucinations.
This is a space for the nonconformists.
Creators. Writers. Builders. Dreamers. Technologists. Thinkers. Artists.
(Is that you?)
The ones who refuse to be categorized by one thing, and wish to design their personalities and domains of knowledge through skin, teeth, bone, and tongue.
You can expect a myriad topics from these essays—from the curious to the rattled to the flesh-and-soul-ripped-at-the-seams—but most of which concern what I’ve ranted about ad nauseum:
The interior life of making something real. The novel, the art, the resistance, the nights it doesn’t work, and the showing up anyway (yes, this matters)
Achieving wealth and breaking the cycle of inherited poverty—and what it costs to be an artist who keeps what she builds
Questions worth sitting with, ideas worth sharpening, philosophical provocations that keep me up at night in-between coffees
Beauty as a demand, not a decoration. Art, film, the specific works that ask something of you and change you before you understand why… this, this, this
The honest, raw, unfiltered documentation of building this media brand from scratch. (Real numbers, real failures, what it actually takes, etc.)
… to name a few.
I’ve rebuilt, regrown and rebranded The Oyster many times during my ever-changing quest. My love of many things is often my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. My hope is writing through raw, weekly letters that I can dismantle the former walls that held me back, and pull back the curtain of the future I—and-you are meant to unravel.
Together. Alone. With purpose.
The black and white and bloody gray in-between.
Because I’m foaming at the mouth to learn everything it will possibly take to build a mind, soul, and life I care about—while creating a body of work I can look back on with so much pride and love and gratitude—and I invite you to please consider the same.
If this made your flesh erupt into goosebumps…
You’re going to love it here.
I don’t take this mission lightly, and I hope you’ll join me in this endless adventure.
You have my eternal appreciation and gratitude.
See you on the other side,
— Taylor
