The Letting Go lesson

Dear Readers,

I’ve been living on my own for more than two decades now, and over time I’ve moved slowly, inevitably, towards a more structured existence. Sometimes I get a little misty thinking about the good old days of scoring sofas from the curbs of better neighborhoods and organizing my social life around whose car had gas or what clubs were on the bus line. Other days, I revel in my ability to make a cake without running to the store for eggs and usually having a pen and paper handy when I need to make a list. But one thing about my life has never changed. I don’t send holiday cards or annual family letters. I just don’t like the idea of buying boxes of someone else’s pictures and words, agonizing over personal notes to all the people to whom I wish I’d been a better friend or relative over the past year and clogging the U.S. mail and landfills around the country with another five pounds of paper waste. And family letters are a trap. Too optimistic comes off as false; too pessimistic is a real downer. Needless to say, I no longer receive many holiday missives, and the stack gets shorter every year. At this rate, I estimate I’ll be completely free from them by 2008, except for a few holdouts who never trim their list to exclude non-participants. Wish me luck.

That having been said, and never having been one to deny my own hypocrisy, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the past year at Vital.

One year ago, things were looking pretty bleak. Within two weeks, I lost my managing editor and ended an often-rocky relationship with my art director. The same month, my much-loved administrator/sales assistant/ad designer decided she needed to leave to focus on her last year of grad school. Already stretched paper-thin, I picked up the slack as best I could, which wasn’t very well. Subsequently, ad revenues fell off as I spent more time doing other things (I also used to be the sales staff) and we fell behind with some bills. By February, the wolves were at the door. At our birthday party that month, I wandered around in a state of self-indulgent melancholy, drinking a little too much and silently thinking “goodbye” to everyone who came out to celebrate with us. Afterwards, I hid in my home office for three days, wrapped in my bathrobe, not even able to get it up to take a shower or answer my phone. Mehrdad and I had a few incredibly depressing conversations about the nature and implications of failure.

In the meantime, though, we felt we had to keep putting out Vital until we had a plan. So we did, and I’m here to tell you that the experience was one of the most valuable of my life. It totally sucked to operate through the emotional filter that our beloved publication was in hospice; so much so, in fact, that we went into a euphoric sort of denial about the reality of our situation. My new art director encouraged me to think more creatively about the design and be willing to try things we might or might not keep beyond one use. Why not? It wasn’t like we had to preserve our templates for posterity. I also started being less apologetic and more brazen with potential writers. Freed from the vision that “some day” I would offer stable wages to experienced talent, I pulled in younger writers with new ideas and let them run with them. I had nothing to lose. Mehrdad added distribution locations like crazy, putting Vital in front of many potential new readers, and took on distribution of several other publications.

Our deathbed abandon had a most unexpected effect. By late spring, a new energy had suffused the office. Suddenly (or so it seemed), the place was full of talented, engaged young people who believed in Vital and who expected more than survival – they wanted world domination. It freaked me out at first, and I stupidly tried to curb their enthusiasm. But my behavior only confused them, so I learned to keep my doubts to myself and go with their flow. Their excitement was contagious, and their crazy productivity freed me and Mehrdad to get our heads back in the game. Many of our long-time staffers, feeling the new groove, stepped things up with their own contributions. By summer we’d ramped up well beyond anything we’d achieved previously and raised the bar for going forward. And all because we were too stubborn (or dumb, but why split hairs over semantics?) to quit when we were clearly beaten, and so learned – albeit accidentally – the time-tested lesson that burdens shared are light enough to carry. Or maybe the lesson was about truly inviting and accepting the help you need, or about what is able to happen when you let go of worry to experience joy in the moment. Perhaps it was all of these things and more.

As we head into the new year, I want to express my love and gratitude to (in no particular order) Lucky, Joy, Evan, Kevin Groen, Charlie, Joel, Paul, Jon, Russ, John, Cate, Frizell, Erin, Matt Wild, Michael Mace, Melissa, Alex, Eric, Kevin Krekline, Phil, Blaine, Tate, Stephanie, Jessica, Amber, Melly, Bradley, Barry, Julie, Ellen, Jesse, Liz, Brian, Anna, KT, Matt Krystowiak, Lisa, Rebecca and everyone else who has given of themselves for reasons that continue to mystify and humble me. They ARE Vital Source, and I am blessed.

Peace,

 

Jon Anne

PS – Next month, Vital will again have a new look. Don’t be concerned. Change is good.