A new moon this past Friday, the new church year a week ago. Six months flew by, and it’s time for another blog post. No time like new.
I’m grateful this morning for the livestream of Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia. Pastor Tyler asked us to examine how we value time. It’s more than money, and more finite.
I think of the clockface and inscription on Old St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco’s Chinatown: “Son, observe the time and fly from evil.” It’s not enough–what are we supposed to fly towards?–but still, a good place to start. Not ignore the time, but observe it. Look how fast it goes. And do something now–not out of desperation or a manufactured urgency, but with a sense of gratitude that anything is possible at all.
As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’ve been playing around with publishing little booklets, and eventually not-as-little books. It’s entrepreneurship, design, craftsmanship, decision-making, community building, web developing, and more. It’s a lot of things that a lot of people know about already. But I don’t know as much yet.
I’ve been helped and heartened by the examples of Joe Biel and Elly Blue at Microcosm, and Anne Trubek at Belt. These are publishers who write and talk about what they do in a way that makes me think I could do it, too. That there’s room for more voices in print, and that I can help make that room.
But I realized that these folks write from the perspective of publishers who are publishing. Which is great. Very helpful and inspiring. But I thought it could be fun to be similarly transparent, and much earlier in the business life cycle. So others can see a little more, hopefully, about how one publishing company comes into being.
Observe the time. Six months flew by. What will we make of the next six? Stay tuned…