About the Magazine
Written for Shoot the Breeze Magazine: Volume 00 - July 2024
‘Shoot the breeze’ is an idiom dating back to just over 100 years ago. Idioms are interesting, only having meaning through shared experience and understanding. ‘Shoot the breeze’ means to sit around and chat. First recorded in 1919, and apparently used by the New York times in 1957. This saying has a casual meaning to it, some have heard ‘shoot the bull’, or ‘shoot the shit’. It’s thought ‘shoot the breeze’ is a variation of ‘talk into the wind’, which has a similar casual conversation feeling.
At Shoot the Breeze Magazine, we’re taking a different spin on the phrase. First, Shoot the Breeze to us is a play on words. Oklahoma may not be home to ‘the windy city’, but it sure is a windy state. Second, shooting the breeze is having a good conversation with someone, getting to know them as a person. Shoot the Breeze Magazine is about connecting the local community. With instant access to real-time data from just about anywhere on the planet, it’s so easy to focus on what is going on everywhere else. Shoot the breeze is about making the most of your interactions with other human beings. Shoot the breeze is about really connecting and getting to know people. Through a casual conversation and showing genuine interest, you can learn so much about a person. More than just where someone is from and what their hobbies are, you can learn why they are the person they are today. You can learn of their struggles and their triumphs, their choices, their regrets, their motivation to keep going every day. These things are what make us people and define our personality. Personifying people as people. We are all human beings, but I believe our experiences and our connections define us as people.
This idea came from exploring Downtown Oklahoma City. Living downtown puts me within walking distance of so many experiences. Depending on the time of day, you’ll see a wide variety of people from all walks of life. On the weekends, the city is surprisingly clean throughout the day at least. Of course, as people start drinking, they tend to be a bit sloppier, and of course some trash builds up. What most people don’t see though, is the everyday happenings the rest of the week. Walking down the wrong street can change how safe you feel quickly. As someone who struggles with PTSD, I already over analyze people and tend to feel less safe in most environments. On the flip side of this though, I’ve grown a huge love for taking care of people. Starting with photography around the city, highlighting architecture and history, led to wanting to share the stories of people around me. There are so many people in this city who genuinely want it to be better, who want to watch it grow. There are also a lot of people in this city who can barely get through the night. We’re all people, we’re all human, and we’re all struggling in some way.
It’s been a long road to get here, the journey started with separating from the Air Force. After a little over 9 years, I didn’t love the job anymore. Four deployments, a lot of travel, and an honorable discharge put me in what I thought was a good spot. Pursuing education and finding my way into an hourly retail job, things started off alright. I quickly realized I had to direct my focus to what gave me the most money. Leaning into work over school paid off, promoted to a management position within the first few months, quickly working my way up to managing three stores. The more my reach expanded, the more I uncovered. I started to realize people were being treated very poorly, taken advantage of, but I continued to do my best. November of 2023, I hit a low, terminated from the job and a relationship of three years coming to an end. 2024 has been about building myself back up. Finding my way into another hourly retail job, I quickly learned my time was worth more than what people were willing to pay me. Tired of watching people with a lot of money, taking advantage of people with a lot of heart, or a lot of need, I’ve decided to do things differently. I’ve grown something myself, with the goal of helping others. Over five weeks I wrote out over fifteen thousand words, taken thousands of pictures, designed a few dozen pages, hours and hours of research leading up to interviews and experiences, with the idea of giving authentic stories.
Now that the first issue is finished, the goal is outreach and planning the future. The goal is to have a full yearly schedule with monthly releases. Each month will have a theme, charities to be donated to, and packed full of local stories. The idea here is to connect people with each other, give real, raw views into people’s lives. Staying true to our goals, honest, positive and educational content, the goal here is for this magazine to be parts of many other forms of art, like a traditional magazine, but more words, and a central theme, making it almost feel like a collection of short stories. A focus on tying everything together across spreads, ensuring the writing, pictures, and design all come together. A lot of work has been put in to make sure this is unique, and worth buying. The aim is to continue to be self-funded, in the sense of not having paid advertisements. We want to highlight places because we want to and because they care about building the community, not just because they have the money for it.
The future of this magazine begins with growing ourselves. We plan to open a print shop in Downtown Oklahoma City, first to produce our magazines in-house. The goal is to bring production costs down, while keeping everything made locally. Operating a space requires more hands as well, we want to open the space up to local artists, to display their works proudly. Creating a space open for exploration and wonder, connecting the community to our work. We also seek to create jobs within the city, producing and publishing a magazine takes a lot of work. Through a platform to share stories, and a space to grow, we want to create our own stable foundation. While growing our space, we want to help others around us. There are a lot of people in our city that don’t have a lot, some without a home, or even a bed to sleep in at night. Forming a Street Outreach Team will allow us to share stories and build the city around us. Everyone deserves to be able to survive, to prevail, and to thrive. Our final goal for this year, a monthly event “Walk for the Voiceless”. We are creating a culture of authenticity, and many people don’t have an outlet. Mental health is something that needs to be nurtured and supported, we hope to create an event bringing people together. A simple walk around the park or through the city can be very refreshing, even more so when you can enjoy it with others. Overall, at Shoot the Breeze we care about people, we want to cement ourselves as a place to grow in the heart of Oklahoma.
