A very L’escale New Year
I’ve often shied away from any New Year’s commotion. Naturally, the aversion strengthened in a pandemic, which brought relief that there need not be a big hurrah. That said, I do appreciate the sentimentality a new calendar year brings.
Sure, some say you don’t have to wait until January to make specific life changes. But I find it’s more symbolic this way. And it’s hard to anticipate or prepare for 2022 without reflecting on the events of 2021; after all, it was the year L’escale was born.
I like to think of L’escale as a happy accident, though it wasn’t an accident at all. It was more like a nagging itch that needed to be scratched for quite some time.
In the summer of 2020, when the pandemic really took off, I faced a mild sense of existential dread, something I’m sure many of us felt deeply. I was bored and wildly dissatisfied with my creativity levels. And while I tried (kind of) to get out of this little funk, I couldn’t. So I called Nesrine.
Somehow, in that conversation, we ended up fantasising about an enterprise that centred on our mutual appreciation for hotels and design and that could alleviate the grievances of our unused artistry. At the time, what we spoke of was all hypotheticals. It could be nice to build a company. It could be nice to merge our backgrounds in editorial journalism and photography. We started spitballing ideas of a name and colour scheme. We discussed the style of typography and how we could format articles. It could be nice.
Nothing further really came out of that call until a couple of days later, when we realised we’d be silly not to give it a go. Fortunately, we had the capabilities to do so, and if not now, when?
And so it began.
The journey here has not been so straightforward. Kicking off any business is daunting, especially since Nesrine and I tie so much of our individualism to what we do and how we do it. There were delays, design constraints, copyright dilemmas, and more. Emotions were disorderly and turbulent. But on November 24 2021, our website was finally online.
We couldn’t be more thrilled. And although it’s not perfect, we’ve learnt that not everything has to be. It’s a process, and we intend to spend the next year chipping away at it. Besides, we’ve already been lucky enough to collaborate with some extraordinary people, which has made L’escale that much more fulfilling.
Currently, we’re working on some new content for the coming months, and we’re excited to reveal them soon. None of what we do, however, would be worthwhile if we didn’t have you to share it with. So thank you for taking the time to engage with our stories, follow us on socials and just being there for us as we navigate this thing. Your support as readers and consumers means more than we could describe, and it encourages us to lean into new terrains.
From Nesrine and I, we wish you all a very happy and safe new year. We can’t wait to see what 2022 has to offer!
Originally published at https://www.lescalejournal.com on January 9, 2022.
