On Doing This for Ten Years (!)

Celebrating ten years of takeovers and events, and some words about what's next.

Depending on when and how you started following Jersey Collective, you may or may not be aware that this project has been around since 2014.

Consider this post a “state of the union.” I’m going to talk a bit about where Jersey Collective has been and where it’s going. Sprinkled throughout, enjoy some photos from 2014-2024!

Posts celebrating some milestones--in years, and followers. Thanks to Amy for styling and photographing the top two, and to Haley and Darren (and the clerk at the party store who asked if I ran a 10K) for making the 10K post possible!

Since Jersey Collective launched in 2014, we’ve hosted hundreds of New Jerseyans for takeovers on our Instagram account. Some of them have been professional or hobby photographers, and others would balk at calling themselves that but still took great photos and wanted to share. In the beginning, everyone had to use a phone camera, which kept it simple and not intimidating.

Through the takeovers, our followers have seen what New Jersey looks like from High Point to Cape May, from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean, and everywhere in between.

This project has been around long enough that one of the first articles written about us had an explanation for what Instagram was, in case anyone reading hadn’t heard of it¹.

At some point, I stopped saying “It’s an Instagram account,” when I was asked what Jersey Collective was.

Over the years, we’ve become more expansive in our offerings and have spilled out of that original box I made for us. We’re not just an Instagram account–we’re a book, a sticker machine, a purveyor of New Jersey-themed goods, a literary series, a producer of meetups and other events.

Shots from three instameets that took place in 2014: at Sandy Hook, Double Trouble, and Allaire.

Instead of trying to stuff more and more things into the same box, I think I need to change the shape of the container, so I’m putting a pause on the weekly takeovers. I’m not sure for how long, but at this time I am not booking any new ones going forward (aside from what’s already on the calendar).

A few months ago, I realized just how draining the takeover part of running Jersey Collective had gotten for me. I was in the middle of feeling overwhelmed about a bunch of things, I was crying, and when I finally said out loud that I wanted to stop the takeovers I felt nothing but relief. I started to ask myself, what else could I make room for if I stopped doing them?

Some press over the years: in the Asbury Park Press, New Jersey Monthly, News12, Lamplighter Magazine, and being filmed for a documentary about "interesting New Jerseyans" that was never completed.

I used to say the project “runs itself,” because the bulk of Jersey Collective’s posts were made by our takeover guests, and I saw myself as merely the person overseeing it. But the truth is that managing the takeovers was actually a lot of work and only became more work over time–fielding emails, making the announcement graphics and posts, helping guests with tech issues, monitoring the posts, moderating the comments, worrying and scrambling when someone backed out last minute, reaching out to people who I thought would do an interesting job.

It was work that remained almost entirely invisible, and from which I, as a person, probably seemed removed. But it has mostly been just me this whole time, with a few others helping out in various capacities over the years. I’m very grateful to my former moderators who posted to our Story and did interviews with guests for our blog.

It was work I did consistently for a decade, while I finished grad school, while I worked multiple part time and then various full time library jobs, as I lived by the shore and in the woods and in the suburbs, while I pitched and then made and then promoted a book, and while I just lived my life from ages 24-34.

It was work I did because I liked the result. I liked the space this Instagram account gave people to share their work. I certainly didn’t do it for money (there never was any, despite frequent DMs asking how to advertise–that would’ve just been another thing I had no time to manage).

Postcards and images of the years 1, 2, and 3 gallery shows, which were all SO much work to produce but so so much fun.

I was always so hesitant to actually call it “work”, but “hobby” never felt right either, so running Jersey Collective is sometimes a sort of dangerous gray area, an extension of who I am. “I am Jersey Collective,” is a sentence I have said more than once and hated every time.

Over the years, I’ve oscillated between thinking Jersey Collective felt important–like it was some kind of service that people liked, like entertainment, like a community–and thinking that no one cares at all. This isn’t based on metrics. I never cared about numbers and I rarely did anything to try and grow the audience.

From Instameets: at Bell Works before it reopened, Manasquan Reservoir, Cattus Island State Park, Atlantic City, Duke Farms, and Sandy Hook.

Don’t get me wrong: I do hear nice things all the time from people about how cool they think the project is, how much they like it, how it led them to new places and new people (Jersey Collective helped at least one now-married couple meet!). And that all means so much to me. When putting together this newsletter, I had to scroll through ten years of photos and screenshots from my phone and there were several comments, emails, and messages I’d saved and it was really nice to revisit.

But so much of making anything is wondering, does anyone care about this? And then wondering, do I care if anyone cares about this? Would I still do it anyway?

Images from two of our early workshops: cyanotypes in the park and a "writing from photographs" workshop.

When I think of what Jersey Collective did for me personally, I have to remember how I started this project in part because I was lonely. I was 24, in a grad school program with classmates I liked but didn’t really see socially because most of them had jobs and families and didn’t live on campus. I was in a relationship that increasingly made me feel alone and would end the following year. I desperately wanted to maintain a connection to the kinds of creative communities I’d had years earlier, when I was in film school, when I worked on a literary magazine, when I worked as a freelance photographer.

Jersey Collective gave me some of the most important people in my life. People I talk to regularly. People whose weddings I’ve attended. The reason I met my boyfriend is because I put together a holiday gift guide for Jersey Collective’s blog and spent hours searching for a cool art print map of New Jersey before finding his, and years later he came to a Jersey Collective show, and years later we live together.

The answers you’ve heard me give in interviews and on our website about why I started this project have ranged over the years to how I wanted to see New Jersey highlighted in a positive way and how I wanted to help people discover new people and places. But when I think about why I started it, like why I really did it, it’s the loneliness thing.

Scenes from a gallery show we curated for the Carteret PAC

I remember someone asking me when I first launched this how long I thought I’d do it. Others have asked along the way, too. At some point people stopped asking, which feels flattering. Like people see Jersey Collective as something established, something steady and consistent that isn’t going anywhere.

And just to be very clear: it’s not! I am a person who always needs a project, who wants to do everything, and this is my vehicle for whatever I want to do. If I can find a way to make all of my ideas link back to New Jersey, they get to be a thing I can make as part of this project.

I once sent out a poll asking people what they liked most about the project. Overwhelmingly, it was the takeovers. I felt so much guilt for so long when I thought about stopping the one thing people seemed to like. 

But then I realized what people like about the takeovers is the opportunity to be introduced to other creative, interesting New Jerseyans. I think even without the takeovers, this is still something Jersey Collective does and can continue to do–through our book, our sticker machine, our events, Jersey Collective Reads, and through other things that are forthcoming. Now I will be able to dedicate more of my time to those things, so they will be even better. 

New Jersey Fan Club came out in 2022 with Rutgers University Press.

I have a whole notebook full of things I want to do or make that will make sense as parts of the Jersey Collective umbrella. And I will have more room in my brain and life and schedule if I don’t also have to also manage constant account takeovers.

I’ll be able to turn some of those scrawled lists of ideas into actual things that I’m excited about, and that I think you will like, too. I hope that maybe you trust me, whether you have been here since the beginning or got here because of my book or if you’re newer even than that. If you like this thing I’ve been doing, I think you will really like all of the other things I want to do.

The first market I ever did in Jersey City, a booth shared with NJSpots & New Jersey Isn't Boring, a Bell Works Fresh market setup, and at the Passaic County Book Festival

I felt, for a long time, deeply responsible to maintain the project exactly the way it began. As if every person who clicked follow was holding me to a contract. I changed little things here and there, but the project has been more or less the same since 2014. I make and post the same announcement graphic every Sunday. The app I used isn’t supported anymore. The rigidity of the rules I set for the project–that I literally made up myself–have started to feel limiting to me. And it took me a long time to realize I was allowed to change them. That I don’t owe anyone an explanation or the kind of consistency I once promised or the kind of structure. Even all of this is probably way too much.

Our local artist sticker vending machine project launched in late 2022 after a successful Kickstarter campaign

I remember reading an editor’s letter Tavi Gevinson wrote in 2018 when she announced Rookie Magazine was folding. Part of it reads, Who would I be if this was not such a big part of my identity? What would it force me to confront—about youth, the passing of time, myself—if it were to end? What loss would I feel if it were to just go away? What kind of guilt, if it had been my choice? I remember reading that at the time and thinking, I am going to feel like this about Jersey Collective someday. 

Maybe you’re sitting there reading this and thinking, it's just Instagram, it’s not that serious, and you’re not entirely wrong, but I don’t know how to not take everything I do seriously. I think about everything I do for so long before anyone ever sees it. I started writing this post in October. 

The first Sunday I woke up and realized I didn't have to make a post, change a password, or send an email was a little weird. But then that blank space didn't feel scary–it felt like an opportunity. And that’s what I’m going to build on going forward, and I hope you’ll be here for it.

---

I know I said on Instagram I was going to spill the beans on what this confetti pattern I’ve shared a few times is for, but you’re going to have to wait just a little while longer (until Monday, hopefully²). I promise this announcement is more than worth its own email, and worth the wait. In the meantime, enjoy another piece of art from this soon-to-be announced thing:

What is it?!

I also promised to share the Series 2 stickers, but I’ve decided they deserve their own email, too, coming later this week. The stickers are out for delivery as we speak, and I can’t wait to see them and share them with you soon!

1. It said “Instagram, the photo sharing site,” how charming.

2. I’m too superstitious to announce anything until I have the actual thing in my hands, and as of now FedEx promises it will be here Monday morning.