04 MAY 2020 My name is Rachael Yaeger and I am originally from upstate New York. I have been in New York City for eleven years; our studio is on Canal Street in Chinatown. I am the cofounder of Human alongside creative technologist, Michael Ray. We have worked together for over ten years and have had Human for seven years this year. We’re a full service creative agency and we work with founders and brands on launching or relaunching. We founded Human as a thoughtful development shop for good design but have slowly grown into working as holistically as possible, so we’re with some clients from concept to launch.

I’m incredibly lucky to surround myself with people that I respect and admire. We curate all of our clients, choosing to work with people like SuperHi that will push us to do our best work. We’re currently working with Base, a new at-home blood and saliva testing kit and app for improving your health. The founding team has an engineering background and it’s my dream client; they’re trusting and appreciative and iterative.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I love our team. In a time like Covid, it brings me to tears knowing how lucky I am—how lucky we all are. To work with people who truly know who you are and choose to work with you every day is something I am entirely grateful for. I’m so thankful for the familiar faces during our daily standups, especially during this time. Pre Covid that pretty much describes my day to day, working with our team and our clients on creating good products. We enjoy what we do.

I also work with Zach Pollakoff and our team (Rahily, Sasha, Joel Fear, Veronica Höglund) on Likeminds, an annual creative-conference-meets- festival, which is in its fifth year. Obviously with Covid we’re really bummed that 2020 isn’t going to happen most likely, but that just means people will be looking forward to 2021 when we can all spend time together in large groups. We want to work on Likeminds forever, no matter how the world changes.

While Human and Likeminds as my current core focuses I also do few other things: I’m an avid reader, like my parents were, and I founded [reads] @reads.delivery with Emma. We have stopped our subscription services, but we’re still posting a book per day to share with the world our curation. I’ve been carving out time in the morning or early evenings to sit on my stoop, observe the neighborhood, wave at passersby and read. I am starting Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek.

In the height of the movement towards sustainability I am also working with Emma and Noemie on Bagggy @bagggy.co a small line of oversized clothing.

Emma drove me to Dual Speciality in the East Village with her today, the first time I have been back into the city in two months. As we drove through the city it felt foreign. We stopped by the studio and grabbed my monitor and it seemed to us like an exhibition in a museum titled: this is what creativity looked like pre-Covid. We missed Michael, so we went and found him enjoying the sun on Ludlow and Stanton streets before heading back to Bedstuy with the windows down venting to each other about how odd this time feels, how nice it would be to be at the beach, how lucky we are.

Michael is completely rational and so we made a swift transition to working from home and immediately started daily stand-ups together as a team. At Human, we were very lucky to be in the middle of relaunching a couple of projects and wrapping up design work on another. We were affected by Covid in a good way because now more than ever we’re feeling focused, more buttoned up, more polished as a team.

The first two weeks I kept inbox zero and also launched WildFruits.co with my family. I had a pie stand at the Brooklyn flea six years ago with my partner Hugh only baking my grandmother’s strawberry rhubarb pies and this year as a family we decided to turn that recipe into jam tarts. My mom went to school for restaurant management and ran the Cranberry Lake Inn with my dad for years before having kids. She is super organized and so supportive of me—it’s nice to combine our worlds and do something together.

I’m working on a Sol LeWitt inspired series called “DOT.” I had the idea two years ago while hiking. My dad passed away at 56 and we used to play the dot game all of the time when I was growing up. He was warm and funny and happy, but he was also a perfectionist. “Measure twice, cut once,” was his saying. And so paying homage to him, I am taking my time painstakingly spacing out all of the dots with a ruler and pencil to start.

Any project or business that pays homage to my roots and grandparents gives me a deep sense of drive and purpose. I have never worked from home, so Covid has transformed my life in ways I have always looked for.

I find myself nowadays stopping and noticing, thinking; I always wanted to be the person with a vintage rattan chair. I always wanted to be the lazy reader on a stoop.

I sat outside today in a yellow dress. While my friends on Twitter and many of my colleagues complain about wearing sweats, lately I am cherishing getting dressed some days. I am also the person sleeping in a fresh pair of sweats post bath (look at me, I now am the person who reads with wine in the bath) only to find myself in that same sweatsuit days later. But many days, I open my closet with envy for my own things.

Today felt long, don't you love the days that feel long? It's 6:30pm now. Golden hour. The time of day that I think of Steven Shore. It's early enough to do something, like sit and write this, or finish putting things away from the week, and late enough to retire if I want to, call it a day.

I finished reading a memoir today. One that I was savoring. I'm now the person who reads, some days, before work, and forever on the weekends. A memoir that quite literally hit so close to home it brought me and all my selves, past, present and future, to tears. "You're closer than you think."

Before the pandemic I found it easier to quickly knock things out for work on a Saturday or Sunday or while on vacation so I could get back to reading my book or doing something else. I like my work, but my work is mainly responding to clients, so sometimes it's not as deep or enjoyable as one may think.

Taking this as an opportunity to learn and grow. At this time I'm not reminded of the importance of social connection and physical community, more I am reminded of how important time by myself is. You get this one life and you can do whatever you want to do just make sure it's a damn good one.

I'm doing so much rethinking, rewiring, remembering and deep work right now. My playfulness annoyed me because I so badly wanted to be taken seriously. Now I am looking around and I'm seeing strength, I'm seeing a lot of love, and realizing that I can put things together, I trust, I have talents.

Hugh once said to me admiringly, “you just let stuff roll so easily”, and my internal self critical response would be, “yeah but I'm not really good at any one thing”, and now I am remembering “oh yes, because life is a play and the stage is mine and I know how to make it what I want”. I am more strategic than I have ever given myself credit for, and self work isn't a luxury, it’s a priority for me right now.

If you want to learn how to do something you can. I know how precious confidence is, how delicate we are as human beings. No one knows anything. We are more connected than we think.

Figuring out how I can bring some of my new found learnings and practices into a post-Covid world. Looking inward I realize how much of the previous years I have been living in a hyper state. So much opportunity, so much to do... and I kind of felt this instability building prior to Covid. This pressure for me personally to live life to the fullest; I hate martyrdom but in looking at my actions I have been almost like a martyr to maximizing and activating. Weekends were for seeing people or bringing people together, for theworkingpair.com, how could I be so selfish as to spend time alone, weekends are for a trip upstate, etc.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the shift in effort. What a sense of relief this time has given me, forced me, to be alone. I must have grown up thinking if you can do it you must do it, you're capable, you're strong. I've, for a long time, observed myself working hard and then needing a vacation.

There's effort in living simply, too, it's effort to make coffee and sit on my stoop and read and not think about emails. Though I think I am getting more out of that than perhaps running around the city meeting up with people. It's all about where you place value and how you develop your own reward system.

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If you’re part of an amazing company (here’s looking at you Webflow or Notion) and you’re looking to support and partner with a conference, let’s chat @likeminds.camp.

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Purchase a homemade jam tart at wildfruits.co.

I’m looking for screenplay writer. I also have a children’s book looking for a publisher. Send us your books or follow along to see ours @reads.delivery.