Keeping it simple.
Is hard
The desire to do more – to scale – is seen as a basic essential value.
Being local
Requires that the focus be on the
quality of small,
not the potential for growth.
And yet this is not only structurally difficult
(funding etc)
But also emotionally difficult.
There is a ladder of expectations
So engrained into the culture I grew up in –
Canada 80’s
That even my radical parents were only able to complicate
– not remove them entirely.
(And the way that they’re complicated aren’t always helpful.)
In an early appointment with a therapist, she comments,
harshly in my memory
That the name of my company, Small Wooden Shoe,
was not appealing because of the word “small” –
That people want to like big things.
As with many of her early comments
that I dismissed or resisted at the time,
I now understand how they are (also) true.
Like “minor” and now “local”
I am invested in the small.
While also making and dreaming of scale.