Oh. Hey there. I have an Announcement.
The Inherent Hubris of Announcing My Continued Existence
If a would-be blogger doesn’t blog in a forest does anyone read the blog? No. The answer is no. Writing (or not writing) into the void is a weird thing, it’s a very modern form of self aggrandizement. Creating content assuming that any of you want to actually consume it is… problematic. Except my mom, hey mom! She has to consume it because I am her son. My dad is ostensibly consuming it too, Hey Pop! But he’s usually busy sorting out his students, who actually need encouragement. I am a middle aged man after all. A middle aged man should be self-sufficient on the encouragement front.
But are any of us built that way? Really? Isn’t insecurity one of our main, driving forces?
For some reason I have been lax in making my great announcement of 2021 on this forum, perhaps because I already went to the default social media channels: the Feebs. The Instas, to announce it and have been overwhelmed by the wonderful response.
Last month my children’s book manuscript, “Big and Little Meet in the Middle” got picked up by Princeton Architectural Press. It will be published next fall. Between the time I got the email saying they were interested and the time I signed, much happened, but it was also all pretty quick. And just like that, my dream of being a published children’s book author and illustrator was fulfilled. Well. “Just like that” is a simplification after having worked for months and months first creating the manuscript and then trying to sell it for years after that. I was only able to keep putting it out there thanks to dozens of friends and complete strangers who kept saying it was worth selling. And that encouragement turned out to be completely necessary to keep going.
In the end success was found not on the merits of the manuscript alone, but on a network of people, close and far, who connected me ultimately with the publisher. The coincidences of these networks all leading back to the same person, at the same place I’d first pitched two very rough manuscripts six years ago, who then remembered my name and chanced a look at Big and Little in his mailbox. It’s all sort of astounding. Statisticians might say it was no coincidence, we tend to travel well worn paths and if we’ve met someone on that path it may be they’re traveling a very similar route. These paths are bound to intersect again and again.
Still.
I can’t help but feel there’s something out there like destiny, fueled by desire and hard work, and friends, and long discussions about things we most want in the world during late summer nights. And whatever that thing is has landed me here, in a spot I’ve long coveted. A to-be-published author/illustrator. Was it greedy to have wanted that spot? Is it hubris to assume one is worthy of one’s own desires?
We are built of hubris after all. It is our most human trait. Hubris may be the gossamer thread that separates man from beast. Without these twin competing traits, hubris and insecurity, we may well be still poking at anthills with sticks. Have those stick wielding beasts no shame?
The answer is no. No they do not. And that’s probably fine with them.