Solicited Advice
A Note for the Class of 1999
A couple of years ago in advance of my 25th college reunion, I received a request from our class secretary. She had emailed a group of us asking for something different than the usual class notes submissions. Anittah thought this particular group of people “might have a perspective that could be helpful to others in our class.”
The mission, as she outlined it, was to try to
“Reduce any suffering any of our classmates may be feeling as a function of failing to overachieve on their (understandably) unrealistic expectations about how change happens
Increase a feeling of connectedness amongst our classmates (and to the University) aka ‘these stories from my classmates remind me I’m not alone’
Increase a feeling of overall ‘I’m not an impostor’ belonging by publishing notes that don’t necessarily align with conventional measures of achievement”
At the time, I hit reply to her email and wrote the following in one shot, but I didn’t hit send. I was a bit embarrassed. Like it was a little much, or at the very least needed some editing.
With the time that has passed, I don’t have that feeling anymore or it doesn’t really bother me even if the feeling is still there a little. And now I have a newsletter that can hold space for a somewhat redundant stream-of-consciousness that was originally intended for someone else. Sorry/you’re welcome.
I made a book because I wanted to. It doesn’t have a publisher, there was no advance, no one was asking for it. I did it because I felt like it. And it was fun. It has taken me a lot of time and has cost me thousands of dollars. I hand wrote and illustrated many of the pages, and I had to hire someone to digitize the pages and turn those pages into something that looked like a book. I am printing and distributing the book myself because trying to do it any other way seemed unlikely to be successful and not very much fun.
Sharing my project with people has put me in touch with them in new and different ways. The books are expensive to print, and I haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to print more copies at scale1, so I only ever have a few on hand at any given moment. I’m like a door-to-door salesman, only able to sell what I have and if you happen to be standing in front of me. I’m not sure if this is related, but it seems like people take more care and pay more attention to the book when they do actually get a copy of it because there are so few of them around. Of course, there are also people in my life who don’t really care about it, who are sort of mystified by the whole thing, perplexed by my continued tinkering with it. Admittedly, it’s been pretty mystifying even (especially) to me.
I was able to come to our 25th reunion this year and sell books at the adorable book fair, which felt to me like an ideal way to share the project. Since then, I have been in long and intimate conversations and text exchanges with so many classmates who bought a copy; conversations around our relationship to ambition, parenthood, creativity, work, grief.
While it’s not exactly a tell-all, my book project is personal. As a result, there is a kind of radical honesty in people’s responses to the project, and they do tell me all (or at least some) of their secrets. So I get to witness all the ways in which people feel lonely, scared, precarious but also where they feel proud, moved, joyful. Usually, it has nothing to do with whatever we thought was going to happen when we graduated 25 years ago.
When I first started it, this project seemed like it had nothing to do with anything. I would work on it in a shed in my backyard that we had converted to an office in order to be able to work (away from our kids) during those early pandemic months. I would work on the project in between my “real work” and the relentless childcare, when everything was a mess. I felt like it saved me. How dramatic.
I wasn’t even sure I would share it with anyone. But deciding to share it has been the biggest gift of my professional life. Maybe even the thing I’m the most proud of. Not sure yet. I’ll let you know.
All of which is to say this started as a useless project. It’s most certainly not for everyone. It’s a little strange and a little much. I keep sharing it because whenever I do, something else happens. And as I keep sharing it, it finds who it is supposed to. So it’s kind of a numbers game. The more often I share it, the higher the likelihood it will find another person who it’s for. Maybe it’s for you.
A nice thing about coming back to something I wrote awhile ago is seeing that I did eventually figure out how to print more copies. Progress!
love this so much!