Our new edition is being distributed today, and we feel like we're pushing a little piece of ourselves out into the world.

There’s a shock that happens when you see something out of its usual context – even people and objects that are intimately familiar can become strange when placed in a new environment.

An intense version of that shock happens to me whenever we release an edition.

I’ve been looking at the words and images of CityMag’s 19th edition for weeks. Pages have been pinned to a board behind my desk, I’ve scrolled through versions of them on screen, I’ve printed them out, taken them home, read them over and over, scribbled corrections across them while sitting in bed.

Farrin Foster is the editor of CityMag and City Standard.

And suddenly, on distribution day, those things that have been part only of my private realm are all over the city. Those pages are staring back at me from the street, from café tables. Other people’s hands are touching them, and other people’s eyes are running over them – cooly assessing them.

Today is release day for CityMag 019 – and it’s an anxiety-inducing day.

But soon that anxiety will settle, and I’ll be able to think about what we have actually sent out across the city.

This edition, its a cover featuring the face of Uncle Moogy – a Ngarrindjeri Elder and Songman.

Meeting and interviewing Moogy for this edition’s long form cover article about daily enactments of First Nations’ cultures (published only through City Standard and in print) was an important experience for me. He is deeply knowledgeable, and generous and gentle in his desire to share that knowledge.

Putting him on our cover is also very important to me. While I might have trepidation about putting something into the public that has so long been private, I am very glad of the chance to paper the city with the image of someone who has so much of import to offer our city. The 20,000 editions of CityMag from which Moogy’s eyes gaze are hardly enough to do justice to the privilege of having someone like this living in our community.

Similarly, other stories in the edition are important to me because they represent others who make this city what it is, or who are working on what it could be. There’s the first generation of Chinatown business owners in there, who are now ageing out of running their restaurants and institutions. There’s Brink Productions who are in the process of making a world-class work of theatre from Adelaide. There’s Charlesworth Nuts, which has gone from a small stall in the Central Market to a rapidly expanding and diversifying family business.

Thinking about sending these stories into the world reminds me that the magazine isn’t mine to be anxious about. I have handled the pages on their way out into the world, but they belong to the people represented within them. And representing those people and their stories – some of which don’t often get told – is why we keep on doing what we do.