"She leaves feeling stimulated by the visit and the prospect of work" - Lydia Davis

Hi m'dears,

Ok! So I've been my own boss as a freelance editor for almost exactly a month now. And it's been a super fun and exciting and energizing month. Truly, I am having a great time. One thing I didn't realize a month ago is how very interpersonal this time would be. I've been talking to a ton of people -- folks who do work similar to what I am starting to do and have insights to offer; people who want to employ me right now (yay!); people I hope to work with in the future. I feel like a sponge, soaking up information: finding out new things pretty much every day. And then, as is the case in these intense learning phases of life, my brain is also processing what I am experiencing, frequently in the background. I'll be quietly doing my work when suddenly something -- sometimes a small insight, sometimes a pretty big epiphany -- will be delivered fully-baked from the kitchen of my mind to the front-of-house of my consciousness. So today I thought I'd share with you:

9 things I've learned in my first month as a freelancer.
I initially assumed it would be 10 things. A list of 10 things would be more customary. But I counted, and guess I haven't learned 10 things yet. Learning, after all, moves at its own pace and can't (or any rate, shouldn't, I think) be rushed. Most of these are of the kitchen-delivery-from-my-brain variety (you can picture them swinging into view shouting "behind!" if you want), though one or two are of the interesting-fact-picked-up-in-conversation variety. 

A break would just make me, a Capricorn with bills to pay, anxious
(plus, I’m enjoying this!)
So many people told me I had to take a break between leaving my job and starting as a freelancer. And I get it, I've told plenty of other people leaving jobs the same thing. But I knew I couldn't enjoy a break right now. I'd just sit around worrying about where my next rent check was coming from. Not to mention, I was fired up, motivated, and excited to start. It has been fun. What makes sense sometimes does not make sense other times. It's like Amy Poehler said: "Good for her, not for me."

I get to do this EVERY DAY!
It took me until the end of my second day of work to realize this. 48 hours in. This was real, and permanent, and my life. Not a lark, not temporary. Of course on an intellectual level I knew this, but the rest of me gleefully caught up. 

With Open Studio I was trying to sell something I didn't know very well, this time I’m selling something I know extremely well.
To the extent that I've had anxiety or imposter syndrome about this whole thing, it largely stems from my previous entrepreneurial attempt, Open Studio, which many of you may recall (for those not familiar: it was a coworking and community space that offered workshops and a bit of retail that I ran for about a year in 2018-2019). Because Open Studio ultimately didn't work out, I have sometimes worried that I was not cut out to be a self-employed entrepreneur type person. But then I realized the profound difference: that first effort was born very much out of enthusiasm alone, without expertise, whereas this one is born of expertise and enthusiasm. And, honestly, just based on that distinction along, the two endeavors could not feel more different (and that's without getting into all the other, rather obvious, ways they are different). Realizing that I know what I'm doing as an editor, because I've been doing it for two decades, and owning that, has been a huge lift to my confidence and happiness as a small business lady this month.  

Set phone alarms for meetings.
Someone else who used to work in an office -- where you have Outlook reminders pop up on your screen to tell you that you need to be in a meeting in 15 minutes -- told me this one (after I was late to my meeting with her because I got busy editing a manuscript and no little box popped up on my screen to remind me to call her!). Out here in the wild world of google calendars you're on your own for remembering those meetings. Enter, the phone alarm.  

The math:
5 years larval stage + 21 years in school + 21 years at Chronicle Books
This one hit me like a ton of bricks. I've been talking a lot about how I was at Chronicle Books for 21 years. But what suddenly occurred to me was that, because I went to grad school, I was also in school -- all told, kindergarten through graduate school -- for 21 years as well. And that my school career came right before my Chronicle career. And that the only other period of my life was the 5 years of babyhood/toddlerhood/preschool. Meaning I am now 1 month into whatever the next 21 years of my life is. This utterly thrills me.

The meaning of the word “networking” 
I really think I did not understand what this word meant a month ago. To the extent I'd thought about it at all, I think I'd filed it in the (very large) folder in my mind that holds semi-meaningless business-speak words like "synergy." But that was mostly because I'd had very little need to do the -- very real, it turns out -- activity this verb describes. Getting in touch with people you know (many of whom you may not have talked to in a long time because of this little global pandemic that happened) who could offer you advice or information or indeed material support, and are willing to do so because you share a social bond (somewhere on the professional/personal sliding scale) -- oh hey, lookey there at that, that's networking! Maybe it's calling these lovely folks a "network" that bothers me, as if they were part of a machine serving you -- when really what we're talking about, more often than not, is community. Then again, it's also an awful lot like those cool fungal networks connecting everything in the forest that you read about all the time nowadays.  

The New York Public Library Picture Collection
The New York Public Library has a library of a million-and-a-half loose images gathered from books, magazines, vintage postcards, and other sources, organized in folders by subject. Designed to be used as reference for artists, illustrators, designers, teachers, students, film makers, theater artists, and other researchers. It is open to the public. Did you know about this? How did I not know about this? I want to go! You can learn more about it here. About 45,000 images have also been digitized and can be browsed here. But clearly the main event would be to go hang out in their pretty reading room and browse their blue folders. 

Being in a state of curiosity
Those who know me well might be surprised at all this talk about how much I'm enjoying talking to people. Because I can be, a lot of the time, kind of a misanthrope. People! Who wants to talk to people? Wouldn't I usually rather read books and edit books and look at art and write things and draw pictures? Well, if we're being honest, sure, frequently, this is true. But what I'm finding just now is that everything is new and I'm so curious about everything. My life has changed so much and I want to know all the things. And who can tell me that but others who have had similar or adjacent or even not similar or adjacent but still interesting experiences? Everyone is so different and it's so interesting to hear all the different points of view. I feel like I have the space for it.  

Before the unexpected was rare and bad, now it is common and good. 
When you do a job you've done of a long time, you know how it's supposed to go. If something unexpected happens, that generally means things are going off the rails in some way, something is going wrong. It doesn't happen all that often. Most days go more or less like you thought they would. And when they don't -- uh-oh, it means it's one of those days. The we-did-not-see-this-coming-and-now-we-have-to-solve-the-problem kind of days. We've all been there. Not fun. But here's the thing. That script has now more or less completely flipped for me. I wake up each morning kind of having no idea how the day is going to go, or what it's going to bring. Almost certainly a whole bunch of unexpected stuff is going to happen and, weirdly, wildly, hard as it is for my worker-bee brain to believe, most of those unexpected things are going to be good things. New connections, new learnings, new jobs, new discoveries, new ways of thinking, new conversations, new attitudes, new approaches. Now, I'm not trying to paint an overly simplistic picture here. Of course things go wrong in my current working life. All the time. I've made a ton of mistakes for one thing (remember that missed phone call I mentioned? the tip of the mistake iceberg, my friends). And, conversely, of course I made exciting new discoveries and connections in my former career all the time. It was one of the hardest things about it to leave. I've just noticed that my base attitude toward the unforeseen has really shifted: from presumed train-wreck to speculative serendipity. 

And that's it, that's the 9! A quick note down here, about the photo up top. I took it to help explain the kinds of books I work on to folks who have been asking. A list that includes:  Art, design, and photography books; illustrated gift books; self-help creativity and creative business books; illustrated non-fiction (and long-form text without images); how-to and instructional (particularly art instruction); and gift formats (like guided journals, card decks, etc.) If you want to know more, or get in touch about editorial matters, you can do that here. 

Art

I've also seen some of the most remarkable art shows this month. 

Tiffanie Turner's American Grown at Eleanor Harwood Gallery is phenomenal. Tiffanie, a dear pal of mine, makes enormous hyperreal oversized flowers out of paper (paper!) -- for this show she's turned to wilder forms: the decaying the surreal, the grotesque, the bizarre, but everything also still exquisitely beautiful. The show is up through October 21st and I can't recommend it enough if you're around here. 

While I was at Minnesota Street Project to see Tiffanie's show, I also caught Lorien Stern's Old Friends at Hashimoto Contemporary. The best dinosaur themed art show I've ever seen, hands down. It's over now, alas, but very worth checking out online (just go to the link above and keep scrolling down). 

I drove out with friends to St Mary's College Museum to see Lisa Congdon's Hold it Lightly a gorgeous big collection of screen-prints bursting with life and color -- with thoughtful and positive words and imagery. Lisa is also a long-time pal and I was her editor at Chronicle on a great many books, and so it was especially awesome to see this, her first museum show. 

It shares space with a smaller show of work by the legendary Corita Kent (1918 - 1986), Heroes and Sheroes, also screen prints, in amazing neon colors that have to be seen in person to be believed. There aren't that many opportunities to see Kent's work so, though St. Mary's is a trek for Bay Area folks, I'd suggest getting out there.

Both shows are up though December 10th. 

Books

One more thing! I recently found out that two of my absolute favorite authors have brand new books out and was nearly giddy with excitement to get to buy and devour them: 

Lydia Davis: Our Strangers

Ross Gay: The Book of More Delights

Though the former is fiction and the later nonfiction, they both do that thing I love perhaps most in the world, as Parul Sehgal put it, writing in the New York Times about Davis: "...patiently observing and chronicling daily life but from angles odd and askew...tak[ing] pure pleasure in the muscular act of looking, and invit[ing] us to look alongside her."

Mix Tape

My thirteen-year-old daughter assumed the other day that I would not understand what she meant by "vibing." This is fine. It is teenagers' job to assume they invented the world. But, yes, I do know this. And also? So does everyone else. It's in the OED, for pete's sake. Where it is, quite adorably, defined as "enjoying, dancing to, or feeling inspired by popular music." All of which is to say, I hope you like vibing to this new playlist. 

September: The Knowledge Nugget

xo
Bridget


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