LEtter from the editor
By Coltrane Curtis
Illustration by D’ana of COVL
The themes for Issue 03 of the Team Epiphany Times are Reboot & Connection.
These are things that everyone in my family had to do at the same time.
It’s weird.
It’s like… You know how nerve-wracking it is when you reboot your computer? Like is it going to work again?
I felt that this was that just on steroids.
And I didn’t just have to reboot my entire family’s life.
Simultaneously, my wife and I had to reboot the company—our Team Epiphany family.
Both were things that spoke to me over the last few months.
Rebooting family life, and this is for families with kids specifically, is around activities. From school to friends, how do you actually have them hang out with their friends?
How do they have any socialization?
This time has been about reconnecting our kids’ lives to some sense of normalcy and to try and find some fulfillment and activity when none of the other things are applicable or work.
When it comes to the company, we’re doing many things that we weren’t doing before. We’ve had to figure out how to reboot the heart of the agency, which was centered around experiential.
Since that isn’t quite the case for the time being this has all been difficult. I ask myself, for the agency, how do we continue to stay visible?
We need to make sure that we’re doing work for ourselves. We need to make sure that we’re showing up in the press.
All of this, too, is a reboot.
Personally, for me, this has all been about figuring out ways to stay inspired and happy.
People make me happy; being around people makes me happy.
I can’t do that anymore. But I can try to reconnect.
Because I know it’s all connected still.
It’s the realization that life will never be normal again or be what it once was.
It will be a new normal.
That’s the reboot.
But also, and this is important and tied to everything else, there’s been a reboot of Blackness for me as well.
Not that it needed a kick in the ass, but it can get a little lax at times.
Understanding who you are, your positioning, and how you're perceived.
It’s a reconnecting to Blackness. This time, it makes you refocus and hone down on those principles of your lives that you were living, but it makes you refocus. It makes them core belief systems again.
Whether you’re seeing it show up or not, just know there weren’t any identity issues with myself or anyone else who feels similarly.
But it felt like this moment just gave us all a refocusing on the principles of Blackness.
We’re all focused on it.
It’s a reboot of Blackness and of equity.
It’s a reboot of what we want.
For me, what I want, what this manifests as is opportunity.
Real talk: if little Black kids were being shot at the same rate as little white kids then we wouldn’t be beefing.
Same thing with equal pay and job opportunities.
The reality is that what I think what we’re really looking for is for equal opportunity.
When you think about being equal, I think that sits above the race inequality issues.
Having the opportunity, having equal opportunity.
Or, it could not be, and we have to retool.
I know the hot button is the race topic, but to me, I think that’s tethered to a bunch of other things such as equality in education.
All of this goes back to wanting a fair shot.
To not wanting a handout.
All we want is a fair shot.
And with the recent press we’ve been receiving—the coverage I mentioned earlier—it’s not like I’m excited to see myself in the news.
I’m really not.
I’m excited to see how this now creates more opportunities because we’ve never had as much attention on us before.
I can see the visibility of the shop is increasing the type and quality of opportunities that we have along with the brands that we want.
This allows us to keep talent, identify new talent.
Keep our friends around, basically.
I just start looking at those opportunities as a means to an end.
A reconnecting to those things that are important.
Case in point: I’m a pretty active father.
I can’t tell you the times I’ve missed anything, really.
Me being at home the last four months, and me being at home with Count the last four months straight and seeing his development physically and how he’s now speaking in phrases.
Being able to be with my family so much more lately, it’s a different feeling of being present. It’s interesting and really hits a positive level for me.
It’s a reboot.
It’s pretty wild.