Proof We Were Actually There

The pushback against a world that optimizes everything

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I finished a journal last month. I made it by hand because I wanted it to feel special and motivate me to write: marbled endpapers I made on my kitchen table, a hand-sewn binding with a Coptic stitch, a label I found in Paris where I wrote the date. It was beautiful. About halfway through filling it, I realized I wanted thin lined pages. So I bought a Moleskine for my next one. This is what analog looks like in practice: imperfect, particular, occasionally contradictory. You are not trying to be perfect. You are trying to be present.

A shop window in the Marais, Paris.

I know I’m not the only one turning to analog. Search “journaling” on any platform and you’ll find millions of people talking about it. Film camera sales have been climbing for years. Fountain pen communities have tens of thousands of members. Journal shops – real stores dedicated entirely to paper and ink, my actual fever dream – are opening in cities with lines out the doors. People are taking calligraphy classes, pressing flowers, learning to develop their own film in darkrooms. None of this is practical. All of it is intentional. Something in us is pushing back against a world that optimizes everything, that makes every experience instant and frictionless and identical. Fed by an algorithm and not taste. Instead, we are reaching for texture. For slowness. For proof we were actually there.

In March, I brought a disposable film camera to Paris. I shot a full roll in 10 days: at the flea markets, along the Seine, in my neighborhood. The roll is sitting in a bag waiting to be developed. It turns out it’s a lot harder to have film developed in 2026 than I realized. My local CVS in New York no longer has the machines, and won’t even send it out. That adds to the mystery. Not only do I have no idea what’s on it, but I’m going to have to wait a lot longer to find out.

Officine Universelle Buly, Paris. Every purchase is calligraphed by hand.

Of all the analog practices I keep turning to, correspondence is the one that has required the most of me. A journal entry is messy and private. I don’t really care if I misspell something or my handwriting is illegible. A photograph ends up being archived in an album or put in a frame but not necessarily broadcast for everyone to see. A letter, on the other hand, is a shared experience. Still private, but shared between two people. It asks you to think about another person, to say something worth their time, to be intentional about following through and actually sending it.

A box of vintage postcards at the Paris flea market.

When you write by hand to someone you care about, your pace slows. You choose words carefully. You commit to what’s on the page. There is no delete button. No backspace.

I built Postmarked Paris around this idea. Not nostalgia for the sake of it, but a genuine belief that correspondence still has something to offer that nothing else does. That it’s worth holding on to.

Vintage hand-painted postcards, included in the first edition of Postmarked Paris.

If you’re looking to capture the same emotion, I’d love to share it with you. There is still room in Postmarked Paris Edition No. 2, and I think you’ll love it as much as I do. Each dispatch is a personal letter and a curated collection of vintage French ephemera I source in Paris and Provence. Use it in journaling, craft projects, or to send to someone you care about. This edition ships before I head to the south of France for the summer. Enrollment closes May 29th, or when the final spot is filled.

Go analog with me

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