The Power of Validation

(Note: All images on this post will be decorative pictures of baby goats. Because.)

A few days ago, it was the one-year anniversary of my blog post “It’s Always Been Done That Way.”

A tiny goat wearing a sweater

At the time, writing that piece and posting it in public, where people might see, was one of the scariest things I have ever done in my entire life.

Would I be completely skewered?

Would think-pieces be written and completely misrepresent what I said in favor of complaining about something else?

Twenty minutes after posting, a librarian I admire and who has like, three times the Twitter followers I do tweeted out the link. My initial response was shaking terror. I breathed through it, and realized that the exact type of shame I talked about in the post was the same shame that I was feeling right then.

So I tweeted about that, too.

And I continue to do scary things.