Ongoing Lessons
May 15, 2006 – 12:35 pmEverything in my life I can construe as one ongoing lesson in the extend of my own stupidity.
Starting a publishing requires a certain kind of knowledge base and great organizational skills. Especially when it comes to following up with lots of folks.
I had neither the knowledge base nor the organizational skills to start a publishing company. But I did it anyway. Pretty stupid, really.
I wanted to create books that I might actually buy and I wanted to publish more than one of them a year. I figured I deserved this kind of culture after hitting 40 and losing all my hair to hormones.
So I started this company and still really have no idea what I’m doing most of the time. I do what’s in front of me, but in terms of The Big Knowing in the Sky, I have not a clue. Part of me still believes I Should Have It All Worked Out. In fact, I should know everything before hand. That notion really reflects the extent of my stupidity.
I can’t know the future five minutes from now, and I’m trying to "know" how HfP will look in the future! Sort of like Uri Geller but instead moving spoons around the room, I’m creating something from nothing.
Ridiculous and at the same time very ordinary and human.
Despite making most everything up as I go along, so far things are working out. Worked here simply means that the things that need to get done, are getting done. Of course, our first book has yet to be published (though I did a mock up of it this morning) so I could look back at this post and think "Jackass! you should have known them to stop!"
The working in terms of sales, critical acclaim (whatever that is), positive community feedback, impossible to know. Except for the part of me that needs to know and will make up any story to fill up the impossibility of knowing.
[cross posted at Homofactus Press.]
4 Responses to “Ongoing Lessons”
In the words of Ram Dass, it’s the perfect opportunity to practice “being here now”. You simply cannot know the future, and I think part of perfecting the art of meditation is learning how to sit with the emptiness and not rushing to fill it as a means to assuage our own anxieties.
Patience, for this entity too is emerging from the chrysalis of your dreams and into the actuality of a book whose heft can be measured in many ways…
By Jennifer Gee on May 15, 2006
Seems to me the transition from abstract to concrete (as in the case of your book) is no less fraught with tension than any other transitive period.
By Jennifer Gee on May 15, 2006
hang in there…persistence, pluck and pure pig-headedness gets much accomplished in this world.
By wil on May 15, 2006
I reckon you’re doing pretty damn well, actually.
By az on May 15, 2006