validation

Time may be an illusion, but it can be a useful one. This week marks my birthday, and this year is an even decade after I opened my own editing and design firm in 2011. These milestones, however artificial, give me a chance to reflect on how I’ve grown this year.

But growth doesn’t always mean new external achievements. Sometimes it just means being braver than you were before. One guiding star I’ve used when measuring my growth has been this discussion of courage by Catherynne M. Valente:

When you are born … your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing someone will think you foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk, and crusty things, and fear, and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you’re half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it’s so grunged up with living. So every once in a while, you have to scrub it up again and get the works going, or else you’ll never be brave again. ^[1]Valente, Catherynne M. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. New York: Feiwel & Friends, 2011.

I’ve tried to keep the idea of scrubbing up my courage in mind for several years now, always biting off a bit of something new that scares me but is worth doing anyway. Swallowing the fear keeps the gears greased.

So what have I done to grow this year? A lot of things. Here are some of the bookish ones. [Read more…] about 2021’s Brave New Things