One of our readers, Carol E., wrote to us,

In the morning it’s The Improvised Life with my coffee and then the morning paper.

I have described you as a little jewel of a magazine that I read online every morning. Many thanks!’

We love the image of Improvised Life as a “jewel”—it rings true because for the past five years, we’ve worked ceaselessly to turn raw material (from both original projects and found content) into something personalized, polished and presented to you with (hopefully) a real sense of exchange and mutual enrichment.

When our first Friends with Benefits subscriptions started trickling in, they seemed astonishing little things, precious gifts from our readers, showing up over and over again throughout the day in increments large and small. It felt more than just transactional—each instance was an affirmation of faith from our subscribers that perhaps our creative exchange could go on for some time longer.

Over the weeks, unfortunately, the contributions have petered off quite a bit, and we are not yet as secure as we need to be in order to stay alive.

We’d like to continue our little exchange of precious ideas—us showing you the curious, the weird, the improvised, the beautiful, the breathtaking—and receiving from you these wonderful, vibrant messages of support. Here is another favorite we received from a reader:

Dear Sally,

You are my first fix every morning and have been for quite some time. I think I owe you more than I gave you for all that I get out of all of your wonderful insights each day…When you go on holiday I am really lost. If there is anything I can do to keep you up and running just let me know.

So what can you do for us?

Well, we’d love to be more financially secure, but we’d also like to connect more with our readers. Along those lines, we’re taking steps to open up some channels of dialogue with our audience. Although it’s taken us a bit of time to get into the groove of this whole social media thing, we’re finding that it’s a great platform to informally exchange recipes, sources for materials, innovative ideas, and more.

Girls jumping rope with seaweed, circa 1928
Girls jumping rope with seaweed, circa 1928

Keep an eye out on our Facebook page for discussions, theme days, and weekly featured products, and JUMP into the conversation anytime! Meanwhile, please consider donating or signing a friend up for a subscription via our Friends with Benefits page, and if you’ve already given—thank you, thank you! We love what we do, and we want to keep doing it with you, for a long time.

If you’ve found illumination, joy, or inspiration in this post, please consider supporting Improvised Life. It only takes a minute to make a secure donation that helps pay our many costs. A little goes a long way towards helping Improvised Life continue to live ad-free in the world.

Support Improvised Life ♥

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