Before I Knew How

“I would like to disagree with Homer Simpson when he said “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try”. I think - try and never forget to look around — perhaps there is someone doing the same.”
— from my first InVoice editorial, 2006

Yes I was that bold to disagree with Homer Simpson. And today it made me smile as I came across something very special - a dusty pile of magazines. As I kept traveling, changing countries, perspectives, learning new languages and new ways, I discovered that even twenty years ago I was taking selfies from high angles and enjoyed surrounding myself with amazing people. This magazine was called InVoice - a fun play on “The International Voice” because as mostly the crew of international students we understood that everything came with a price. Especially in Denmark. And it was the first publication I ever brought to life. I was its editor-in-chief. Even writing that now makes me smile a little, because the truth is that when I became an editor-in-chief, I had absolutely no idea how to be one. I didn't know how to start a magazine. I didn't know how to find funding for one. I didn't know how to build an editorial team, work with a printing house, gather contributors or keep a publication going. I wasn't ready. I just started. And the strangest - and perhaps most beautiful - part of the story is that the idea had come to me in a dream. Literally.

I dreamed of a magazine

One night, while I was a university student in Denmark, I dreamed that I wanted to make a publication. When I woke up, the feeling stayed. I could see how useful something like this could be for the international student community around me. But I think there was another instinct underneath it too, one I probably wouldn't have known how to articulate at the time. There were all these interesting people around me, interested in completely different things. Some liked writing. Some design. Some photography, illustration, music, culture, journalism, humour. What if there were somewhere for all of those interests to meet? What if instead of everyone doing their own thing, we made something together? I didn't know then that this question would follow me through much of my life. I just thought: Let's make a magazine.

The first issue

The beginnings were humble. Before I eventually managed to secure funding, the university supported us, and InVoice was a local student initiative. But it was real. For half a year we just photocopied a few pages and stapled them together and eventually we made an actual magazine that went to an actual printing house.

Today I looked again at the editorial page of that very first issue. There we all are - Domantas, Danguole, Matthias, Oliver, Lenny, Anna, Jan, Anders and Me. Different countries, different personalities, different interests, different skills. A little constellation that existed for a particular moment in time because somebody had an idea and other people said: yes, why not?

At the end of my first editorial after I challenged Home Simpson about his insight to never try, I wrote:

“I can say I did (try) and therefore using this space I would like to proudly introduce all those great people who helped this magazine to come to you!”

The grammar makes the editor I am today want to reach for a pencil. But I won't change a word. Because I love her. I love the earnestness of that young woman who was so excited that something which had existed only in her imagination was suddenly something she could hold in her hands. And I especially love that even then, she understood that the interesting part wasn't that she had made something. It was that people had made something together.

Perhaps readiness is overrated

Finding these magazines made me think about how often we imagine readiness as something that precedes action. First we learn. Then we become confident. Then we know what we're doing. Then we begin. Except I'm not sure life works like that very often. At least mine hasn't.

Sometimes an idea appears before the competence required to realise it. Sometimes desire comes before knowledge. Sometimes you say yes and only afterwards discover what exactly you've said yes to. And sometimes you simply begin - and the doing teaches you how to do it. I certainly didn't wait until I felt like an editor-in-chief. I became one by editing. I learned how to make a publication by making one. I learned how to bring people together by trying to bring people together. I learned how to ask for support because something needed supporting. And when I didn't know what to do next, presumably I figured out the next thing. Then the next. And somehow there was a magazine.

My younger self had some things to say

What surprised me most today wasn't actually seeing the magazines. It was reading my editorials. They are wonderfully young. There is Tyler Durden and God, the Little Prince and Japanese sayings, buses and love letters, dreams and death, travel and Christmas, sometimes squeezed together with the philosophical confidence available perhaps only to people in their early twenties. But beneath all of that, I kept recognising something. The questions. In one issue I wrote:

“Sometimes you need to stop for a moment and think once again.”

Elsewhere:

“Small things make a difference.”

Another editorial asked:

“5256000 minutes - how do you measure a year?”

And another:

“Where does the labyrinth stop and the Minotaur begin?”

Its beautiful really how twenty years later, the questions aren't entirely unfamiliar. What makes a life meaningful? What is actually valuable? How do we notice where we are? How do we remain curious? How do we find one another? What do we create with the time we have? Maybe we don't leave our younger selves behind as completely as we imagine. Perhaps we elaborate upon them.

The clues we leave ourselves

There is a temptation, when looking backwards, to construct a neat story. Ah, of course. This led to that. But life wasn't neat while I was living it. I didn't make InVoice because I had identified my future professional direction. There was no master plan. I wasn't strategically developing my skills in publishing, facilitation, community building, storytelling or creative production. I had a dream about making a magazine. And then I made one. Only from here can I see the clues. Retrospective makes us feel so much more superior. But it was this inner desire for creating spaces where different people can contribute. Bringing people together around an idea. Making room for voices. Writing. Editing. Designing. Storytelling. Turning something intangible into something tangible. Creating the conditions for people who might otherwise never have worked together to make something together. At twenty-something, I didn't have language for any of this. But perhaps we sometimes do things before we understand why they matter to us. Understanding catches up later.

5,256,000 minutes

One of my old editorials ends with this:

“Dream more and measure your life in those beautiful moments because they will never be the same!”

Again, I wouldn't write it exactly that way today. But I'm not sure I have anything wiser to replace it with. There is a strange assumption that wisdom travels only forwards - that the forty-something-year-old woman should have something to teach the twenty-something-year-old one. Today I am less certain. I know things she didn't know. Of course I do. I know more about disappointment. Complexity. Responsibility. Love. Loss. Work. People. Myself. But she knew something too. She knew how to have an idea without immediately interrogating whether she was qualified to have it.She knew how to get excited. She knew how to ask other people to come along. She knew how to make something without knowing whether it would become important. And perhaps I need her knowledge as much as she would have needed mine.

Closing time

The final issue of InVoice had an editorial called “Closing Time.” I wrote about travelling, about the Little Prince, about leaving places behind and carrying pieces of them with us. And somewhere near the end, my younger self wrote:

“So I hope you’ll travel far, keep your feet on the ground and will keep on reaching for stars. I hope you will travel to a place whih is not on the map as true places are never there…”

Twenty years later, I sat with those words. She had no idea where she was going. She couldn't have. She didn't know which countries she would live in, which people she would meet, which things she would create, which plans would work and which would collapse spectacularly. She didn't know what would matter twenty years later. And perhaps that is exactly the point. The map is not the point. It’s about an impulse, a curiosity, a conversation, a dream. And then comes the choice of whether to follow it.

Begin anyway

Looking at these magazines today, I don't particularly feel proud of having been an editor-in-chief at such a young age. Pride isn't quite the emotion. I feel tenderness. For the girl who didn't know how. For the people who said yes. For the university that helped before there was funding. For the printing house that turned our files into pages. For all the mistakes and typos that must have happened and that, twenty years later, don't seem important enough to remember. For the sheer improbability of something moving from a sleeping person's imagination into the physical world. And maybe this is what these magazines have returned to remind me. You don't always have to be ready. Sometimes readiness is created by beginning. You don't need to understand where an idea fits into the story of your life before you follow it. You don't even need to know whether it will succeed. Some things are worth making simply because something in you says: This should exist. And then you look around. Perhaps there is someone doing the same. Perhaps there are people waiting to join you.

Perhaps twenty years from now you will find what you made in a forgotten pile somewhere, open the first page, and realise that the person you have become was already there - not fully formed, not particularly ready, but curious enough to begin. And perhaps that is enough. Dream it. Begin. Learn by doing. Look around. Find your people.