I just got home from a very exhausting trip. While the trip was super duper fun and was really (really, in every sense of the matter) more a vacation than something work-related, I found myself being extremely introspective while we were up there and a lot of anxieties have been coming to mind as of late.
In one of my favorite movies (You've Got Mail), there is a part where the protagonist talks about leading a small life--she (Kathleen Kelly aka Meg Ryan) owns a small bookstore that's about to be put under by a giant chain store and she asks herself in one scene whether or not she's been brave; she says she's lived what she likes to think is a small and meaningful life but what if her life ends up just being small and that's it? I've been going through a similar mini-crisis. While I love what I do and running an indie pub can be extremely fulfilling, it can also be very, very tiring and emotionally taxing. I'm the kind of person who can get severely emotionally attached to the things I'm passionate about--and when things don't go as planned, I get very, very hurt.
One of the things that people say a lot in the indie world (or maybe the literary/art world in general) is "don't take it personally"--yet another thing echoed in You've Got Mail--and I see the merit of that saying if you're talking about critique but it's difficult for me to accept that of the business aspect of things. I know there will be times when things don't sell out completely or times when the events fail but so far, these past couple'a events have been the only ones that've flopped for us and so maybe that's why I'm taking it extra hard. It's not the (lack of) monetary compensation that kills me--it's the hurt that I see in the people who are signed with us when people pick up the book and flip through it then go "Wow, that's nice but now that I've read it I don't see the point in buying it" and put it back. I know how hard it is to generate work and how difficult it is too to find an affordable, quality printing place and then spend nights collating the pages and fixing the layout and stapling, stapling, stapling and I know that these people don't deserve that hurt. "Don't take it personally" just doesn't seem to apply in a situation like this because what is more personal than something you literally put together?
I think about myself sometimes and wonder if I'm suited for this job. Am I the right person to be running this thing? Or have I over-extended my boundaries? Should I have just stuck to writing and selling my own material? Maybe the person doing this should be someone more managerial and less scatter-brained and/or "attached to the product"?
I overestimated myself once by running for (and winning the position of, sadly) Prose Editor and after that horrific experience I thought I'd decided that I could be the judge only of my work and no one else's and yet now I find myself in this position again--in a position to choose what to put out there and what to shelf. And I am so terrified to fail because it's not just me and my silly little feelings at stake. I am trying--bending over backwards, really--to be the best person for this.
February isn't over yet (I tell myself again).
