Creative Bulletin n.222

Wednesday's event went well, even too well 😂 I held intùiti sessions from 6 p.m. until just before midnight without ever being able to stop (thank you so much to those who stopped by 🙏)

What happens when we break our routine. It was strange not to attend the Turin Book Fair with our stand. By now it had become an inevitable appointment in our schedule, and I felt out of place as I entered through the main gates and not from the back.

It was also a new experience. It had been years since I had attended the Fair as a guest, and I had the opportunity to do what I was never able to: wandering around, making appointments, and, in the evenings, going to parties. In the end it was more stressful than having the booth 😂

Getting out of my routine made me realize that:

• Not attending the Fair is not a big deal. No one died. There was no drama. I didn't have the feeling of saying, «Oh, my God, what have I done?». I felt free.
• I wasn't missing this much outside the booth. It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends and colleagues scattered around Italy, but other than that, I found it tiring. Little exchange and much, too much hurry.

The most important lesson
On Friday I finally went to one of those invitation-only parties I always dreamed of attending when I was young, because I wanted to experience the feeling of physically entering the publishing world, to feel like I was part of it.

At two o'clock in the morning, when the table of celebrity guests left, the place emptied out within three minutes, ninety percent of the people were gone. I was bewildered, wondering why we were all there.

On the way home, I did some soul-searching. Why did I want to go to those parties? To meet someone important? To achieve something? Why have we been taught that you can only move up the ladder through personal relationships?

🌈 Creative takeaway: let's focus on what we can touch.
As I killed myself with questions, I realized the most painful and grotesque aspect of it all: I had not been able to talk about books with anyone. One of the most important reasons for me to be there was to find like-minded people to engage with, and instead I had the feeling that I had been in a random place, just to show myself that I could be there.

It made me want to stay on the other side even more, to write, to publish, to design, to do something tangible, that one can touch.

With ❤️,
Matteo

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