I’m finally able to work on the sacred spaces launch today and a bit tomorrow. Getting to this point has felt a bit like a steep uphill struggle.

In part I’ve been drawn away from work on One because of a project brewing around a new Bahá’í site for 10- to 14-year-olds, which brought me to San Francisco for a weekend summit meeting. Mentally, for me, the projects can get a bit mixed, vexing as that may be.

But in addition to that, I’ve been feeling the urge to do something different with One now that we’re entering its second year as a Web site. This urge arrives in the guise of a great huge cloud of grumpiness. Sometimes a person has to wait until the cloud can lift a bit to see what all is hidden inside. This waiting period can be very frustrating. There is a creative aspect that is simply not possible to control in a linear fashion.

Today, sorting out these issues through a bit of talking with River, who is One’s art director, I realized that a change in Web format would be a great thing. What if One were a semi-steady blog instead of a static, non-commentable theme-oriented product? Even a semi-steady blog could maintain the theme concept, if it’s even worth hanging onto. (It helps me anchor article ideas, but I don’t know if it helps contributors at all.)

Another knot I’m trying to untangle is how to continue to work with contributors and possible editors. In the last year we’ve seen a lot of highs and lows in the teamwork process. I’ve realized that I do myself a favor when I work with other people face-to-face, especially people under the age of, say, 24. (Folks older than that tend to be more steadily available over email, even if they are otherwise occupied a lot with school, work or family.) But putting together a local team is like herding cats. Sometimes it just clicks, but it doesn’t seem to be because of anything I do. Therefore, I wonder what’s worth doing.

I want One magazine to survive but it’s hard to do in a vacuum. What tactics might I employ to lessen that sense of vacuum, and foster instead a sense of community, of readership, collective art, participation and commentary; mutual exploration; a showcase of what we do individually and in groups? A place where anyone can drop in and find something to appreciate?

I’ll continue to ponder these questions as I assemble what will likely be the final piece of a certain nine-part series—One magazine’s first year online, beginning and ending in springtime (in the northern hemisphere anyway).