Bring on the Birthday Cake: "Our Lives" Turns One-Year Old

Madison's gay magazine Our Lives — affectionately known by me as "Gays of Our Lives" — is one-year old. Seriously, think about it: would you have predicted that a free magazine centered on "the gays" would make it through one issue, or two — or seven? Well, it has, and it has done so in style.

Our Lives, published every other month, went from booklet-size to a slick, full-sized, thirty-six-page publication. Issues are theme-driven. Photography is impressive. Advertisers are plentiful. And aspiring writers get the chance to shine the spotlight on people or businesses that are making the Madison LGBTQA community what it is.

By the way: I'm a regular contributor to Our Lives and author of the July/August cover story. So, do I want you to pick up the magazine or read it online? Of course. But not because I think I'm so great. It's because the magazine is so great. And necessary. And informative. And surprising. And really, because it exists at all.

Now I'll get out of the way and let founder Patrick Farabaugh tell us what it's been like publishing a new magazine in Madison this past year.

JN: So, it's a year later. Did you think Our Lives would be here for its one-year anniversary?

PF: I barely could see where it would be in week, much less a year! Truth be told, in my experience, most ideas materialize from individuals identifying their own needs. At the time that the concept for Our Lives was developing, it was coming from a need I felt to have the support that comes from the kind of professional visible community I saw in larger cities. At that time, I didn't have much more than an idea — and enough of a need to bring it to life.

JN: Did you think Our Lives would be here in the form its in?

PF: I want to answer this with a very ambiguous, "Yes." I feel like I've always understood the magazine's potential. I just had no idea what turns would be needed to navigate from point A to point B. In that sense, I feel like Our Lives has been drawing its own map as it grows.

JN: What two things have most surprised you about where the magazine is now?

PF: Easily, the one thing that has surprised me the most is how hard this has been. I've never, never had something test how much I believe in myself like this project has. I can't expect anyone who hasn't taken at least a few big risks in their life to understand, but this past year has kicked my ass harder and more times than I am really ready to count. Our Lives launched in an economic downturn, and with practically no start-up capital. For most of the first year, I was working three jobs and totally fell off all my family and friends' radar because if I was awake, I was working. And even then, this still broke me. I watched all the things I owned in my life slowly evaporate. My car. My apartment. My furniture. All those kinds of material belongings . . . they're pretty much gone now. Each time I had to let go of something to be able to dedicate my energy to this magazine, I had to deeply question how much I believe in what I am doing. The easy answer to that? All that said stuff is gone, and the magazine is still here.

The second biggest surprise is that it is working. As hard as it has been to just survive through a week sometimes, it's easy to lose the ability to step back far enough to see the forest growing up out of the trees. The user directory at www.ourlivesmadison.com is growing practically daily. Madison is opening doors to advertising dollars for the first time that have always been closed to our community until Our Lives. Also, you are beginning to see faces emerge and contribute to a forum that helps educate, affirm and advocate the strengths and contributions LGBT people have made to all of our communities.

JN: What two things have you learned about magazine publishing?

PF: First: Media needs to be omnipresent. For a publication as young as Our Lives, that means a lot of media partnerships. Dane101, 92.1 the Mic and Madison's CW Network have been incredibly dedicated and loyal supporters of this from the moment they've learned about it.

Second: Really get to know your market. No matter how big or small the city, the success of anything is still dependent on traditional relationships built through trust. Still being relatively new to Wisconsin, I was fortunate enough through the success of the Madison Gay Hockey Association [which Patrick founded] to have enough name recognizability and community trust for the more institutional LGBT organizations and businesses to get behind the magazine. Nothing happens overnight, and your business will move as fast as you are able to network and build those professional relationships.

JN: What issue of Our Lives was the hardest to produce and why?

PF: Hands down, the gender issue. Getting that issue to press had Our Lives on life-support more times than any of the other five issues from our first year. Each issue is anchored by a first-person narrative. Finding a transgendered person willing to put themself and their journey out on display and expose themself was a serious challenge. I talked to a number of trans people who were in tears at the idea alone. It was also important to me to not create a "trans" issue. I'll never do a "gay" issue or a "lesbian" issue, so separating transgendered people away into their own issue felt terribly wrong to me.

It took some work to make sure the contributors understood that the issue was about increasing gender cognizance in all of us. That is why the feature on A Room of One's Own was crucial. Feminism was the first real push for gender recognition, and the grandmother to our own civil rights movement. On top of that, I had conservative advertisers drop out and pull away from being in that issue. You know, I'm not one to swear much but, fuck them. Their loss, our gain. When it was said and done, that issue moved on the street faster than any other issue this past year. I've even considered reprinting it to meet the demand there was for it.

JN: Where do you think Our Lives will be next July?

PF: Hopefully in full color [currently only the front and back covers are in color], attracting even larger contributors and a lot more stable and structured production calendar. Now that Our Lives has survived a year and grown the online user directory to a respectable size, I've invited our readers to take an online survey to help steer the content and help the magazine become something that is an essential part of our community.

JN: What will it take to get there?

PF: The things that I've been able to identify, I've already taken steps towards accomplishing. Joan Gillman from the UW School of Business has signed on as my business adviser/coach and Jody Glynn Patrick, the publisher of InBusiness Magazine, has been my most beneficial sounding board. Now that I've made it through a year cycle, I'm looking at a complete budget to see what can be expected and evolving the business plan to grow goals from there.

Thanks everyone, and please if you are reading this, help us understand what topics and people are important to you. Take the survey found on our Web site: www.ourlivesmadison.com.