Galena House Publishing.Let Them Have Their Version.
There are Sundays when a house feels used up. Not sad. Not empty. Just used.
The coffee has been made several times. The dishwasher has had more conversations with me than most people. Somebody has left a glass somewhere a glass does not belong. A towel is hanging from a chair. There's a light on upstairs that nobody needs.
And eventually the house settles. That is usually when I notice how tired I am.
So this is a Sunday Special. The regular rhythm here is Tuesday. New episodes come when I have something worth bringing to you, but when they come, they come on Tuesday.
I have had this podcast for approximately five minutes and I am already violating my own policy. This feels on brand.
I have been trying to find a graceful way to say that this year has been hard. I do not think there is one. It has been hard. It has also been extraordinary.
I keep waiting for those two things to cancel each other out. They do not. A year can hand you something beautiful and take something from you in the same motion.
You can be proud and disappointed. Grateful and furious. Certain and completely lost. You can have the best year of your life and still need to sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes, because putting on socks has become emotionally ambitious.
I am learning this. I have learned quite a lot this year, actually. Some of it willingly. Most of it through the traditional educational method of being forced.
I am thirty-one. I had assumed that by thirty-one there would be some administrative confirmation that I had become an adult. A letter. A card. A small certificate, perhaps.
Instead, people simply keep asking you questions as though you know things. Sometimes important questions. Sometimes they put you in charge. Nobody checks. This is alarming.
There are ways I have grown up enormously this year. There are ways I am still growing. And for once, I do not think I need to make that sound prettier than it is.
I am still becoming. That is true. I am tired. That is true. I am proud of what I have made. Also true. And I have had to let go of some things I thought would become part of my life. True again.
Maybe growing up is partly learning that several truths can sit at the same table, without one of them having to leave.
Still, by Design. taught me something about stillness. Good Little Innkeeper has taught me something about truth. I did not know they were going to be different lessons.
When I wrote Still, by Design., I was writing very close to beauty. Not prettiness. Beauty. The kind that happens when somebody puts coffee beside you without asking. The sound of people downstairs before you're ready to join them.
A fireplace. Fresh snow. A room somebody took the time to prepare. A person remembering how you take something. The tiny signals that say you have been noticed.
Still, by Design. believes in those things. So do I. I think I always will. It believes healing hides inside ordinary rituals. A meal. A walk. A room. A second cup. The decision to remain somewhere long enough to notice yourself changing.
I needed that book when I wrote it. I still need it.
But then I wrote Good Little Innkeeper. And that book looked at the same house with the lights turned all the way on. That is different.
Beauty survives the light. Fantasy does not always.
There's a sentence underneath Good Little Innkeeper that has followed me for months. This is a story about two people projecting entirely different meanings onto the same dream. I think I had to write an entire novel to understand that sentence.
Because I am very good at meaning. I can give almost anything meaning. A room. A conversation. A job. A look. A Tuesday.
Probably a spoon, if you leave me alone with it long enough. I am a writer. This is occupational.
But it is also personal. For most of my life, if I loved something, I did not simply love it. I imagined what it could become. I could see the future version before the present one had finished introducing itself.
Sometimes that is the best thing about me. It is how I build. It is how I write. It is how Galena House began. I can walk into something unfinished and see it completed.
I can see the lamp before there is an outlet. The book before the pages exist. A community before anybody has gathered. Warmth before the fire is lit.
That is useful. It is also dangerous. Because imagination can begin impersonating evidence. And I have done that.
There have been times when I thought effort meant agreement. That loyalty meant a future. That usefulness meant belonging. That because I was giving everything I had to something, the thing must be giving itself back to me in the same language.
That is not always how it works.
Sometimes two people can stand inside the same room, and believe they are building entirely different houses.
That realization has been one of the hardest parts of this year. I do not say that angrily. I think that matters. I am not interested in becoming angry because something did not become what I imagined. I am interested in understanding why I needed it to. There is a difference.
When I set out to do any of this, I came from love. I know that about myself. The books. The house. The work. The podcast. The ridiculous number of things I have built, because apparently hobbies make me nervous.
It came from love. That does not mean I was always right. I want to be careful about that. Good intentions are not immunity.
You can mean something lovingly and still hurt someone. You can want the best for a place and still misunderstand what the place needs. You can care for somebody and still ask something from them they cannot give. You can be trying very hard and still be wrong.
This is deeply inconvenient. I would prefer intentions to function as receipts. Look. See. I meant well. Refund, please. They do not.
Part of growing up has been learning to say both things. I meant that with love. And I was wrong. Or, I meant that with love. And you experienced it differently. Or, I meant that with love. And it still did not work.
Those sentences can live together.
For most of my life, I thought that if someone misunderstood me, the misunderstanding became my responsibility. I would explain. Then I would explain the explanation. Then, if necessary, I would prepare supplemental materials.
I am extremely dangerous with a PDF. Give me one emotional conflict and access to good typography, and suddenly we have an appendix.
This is funny. It is also exhausting. Because I believed there must always be one more sentence that would finally make another person see exactly what I saw.
Writers are especially vulnerable to this. We believe in revision. If a sentence fails, we write it again. If the reader does not understand, we clarify. If the scene does not land, we restructure it. This works beautifully with manuscripts.
It does not work with people. People are allowed to leave the page with a different interpretation.
That sounds obvious. It has taken me thirty-one years.
And this is where I have been building my own version of something people call the Let Them Theory. I know the phrase already exists. I am not claiming to have discovered human autonomy from a room in Colorado. Mine is a little different.
Mine is not, let them do whatever they want, because you no longer care. I care. Probably too much. I hope I always care.
Mine is, let them have their version. Let them.
Let them remember it differently. Let them believe you were foolish. Let them think you wanted too much. Or too little. Let them believe the project was one thing, when you knew it as another.
Let them interpret the silence. Let them misunderstand the sentence. Let them say no. Let them leave. Let them remain unconvinced after you have explained yourself clearly and kindly.
Let them have their version.
And then do the thing I have not always known how to do.
Do not move into it.
That is the part. You do not have to live inside somebody else's interpretation of you. You do not have to decorate it. You do not have to make yourself smaller so it becomes accurate. You do not have to spend three more years presenting evidence to a court that was never actually convened.
If you owe an apology, apologize. If you hurt someone, listen. If you were wrong, say you were wrong. If there is something to repair, repair it. But once you have done what belongs to you, let the rest belong to them.
That is not indifference. I think it might actually be respect. Their version belongs to them. My life belongs to me.
I wish I had learned that earlier. Although if I had, Good Little Innkeeper would be forty pages long and extremely boring. So perhaps we call the last few years research. Expensive research. Poorly supervised. But research.
Good Little Innkeeper has been on my mind a lot lately. It is finished. That is strange to say. A book takes up so much internal space while you are writing it that when it is finished, there is almost an echo. There it is. A complete thing.
And now it needs representation. Which means I am about to participate in one of the more absurd rituals we have invented.
I have written an entire novel about love, projection, hospitality, belonging, power, and what happens when two people occupy completely different versions of the same dream. And now I have to send a polite email.
Hello. Hope you are well. Attached please find my soul. Thank you for your consideration. Publishing is very dignified.
But representation happens to be a perfect laboratory for the thing I am trying to learn. I can write the best book I know how to write. I can make the pages honest. I can revise them. Prepare them. Send them. And then somebody is allowed to say no.
Let them.
That is hard for me to say without immediately adding, but wait until chapter nine. No. Let them.
I do not need every person to recognize this book. I need the right person to recognize it. Those are entirely different goals. One requires me to convince the world. The other requires me to keep knocking until one door opens.
I know something about doors. I have spent a large portion of my adult life handing people keys. I am learning that not every locked door is a tragedy.
Sometimes it is simply not your room.
That idea would have devastated me a few years ago. Now I find it almost comforting.
Because I am tired. And I think the world is tired too. I do not mean that theatrically. Everything simply feels very loud.
Everyone is available all the time. Everyone can be reached. Observed. Expected to respond. There is always another notification. Another opinion. Another thing you were apparently supposed to know happened six minutes ago.
We carry an enormous amount of the world around in our pockets. And then we wonder why we are exhausted.
I do not want Galena House to become another loud room. I want it to become the opposite.
, it's all right. That's the ice machine. It does that at night. The house talks to itself. I've decided to find it companionable.
That is what has been changing for me lately. I used to think Galena House was something I was building. I am not sure that is true anymore. I think I am building places for it to appear. There is a difference.
A book can be one. A podcast can be one. A table. A room. A newsletter. A scone handed to somebody halfway up a mountain. The thing itself is not the building. The thing is what happens between people for a little while.
I have said before that I did not build it. I am here to enhance it. I understand that sentence differently now.
Enhancement is not control. You do not own the thing because you cared for it. You do not own a place because you loved it. You do not own another person's experience because you tried to make it beautiful.
You simply add what you can. Warmth. Attention. Language. A chair in the right place. Coffee at the right moment. A little light. Then somebody else comes through. That is community.
And lately I have been thinking about a community that can travel. That matters to me.
For most of my life, I thought belonging was a location. Georgia. Montana. Colorado. A house. A room. A person. I thought somewhere out there was the final place. The place that would explain everything before it.
I do not believe that anymore. I think home can travel. I think a room can exist between two people who are nowhere near each other.
Somebody might be listening to this while driving through a place I have never seen. Somebody might be folding laundry. Sitting alone in a hotel room. Walking home. Sitting in the car for five extra minutes, because they are not quite ready to go inside yet.
And for a little while, we can be in the same room. I like that.
No reservation required. Nobody has to check in. You do not even have to be charming. It helps, obviously. But it is not required.
That is the community I want. Not one where everybody agrees. Not one where everybody interprets me correctly. God help us. Not one built around me at all.
I want a place where people can come close to something human for a little while. Where somebody can say, I am tired too. Or, I have done that. Or, I thought love would guarantee the ending too.
And then feel a little less strange. That is enough for me.
I am not here to fix people. I spent enough years attempting things for which I had no license. I would like to retire from several positions.
World Savior. Director of Other People's Understanding. Chief Executive Officer of What You Meant. The hours were terrible. No benefits.
I am keeping Innkeeper. Writer too. Those seem manageable. Most days.
I do not want the difficult parts of this year to teach me to become harder. That would be the easiest lesson. Something disappoints you, become cynical. Someone misunderstands you, stop explaining anything. Someone leaves, stop trusting. A dream changes, stop dreaming.
No. I do not want that.
I want to become more discerning without becoming less tender.
That is much harder.
I want to keep caring. I want to keep noticing. I want to remember how somebody takes their coffee. I want to see the person standing half a step outside the conversation. I want to make things beautiful, because beauty matters to me.
I want to believe in places. I just do not need them to save me anymore. That may be the difference.
And when I look back at the person who did need that, I feel differently toward him now. I used to be embarrassed by earlier versions of myself.
The boy who wanted too much. The person who kept moving. The person who mistook being useful for being safe. The person who thought that if he made himself indispensable enough, belonging would finally become permanent. The person who could build an entire future from one kind sentence.
I feel for him now. He was trying very hard. He was not stupid. He was not weak. He was learning.
Sometimes publicly. Which is rude of life.
And I do not think I need to punish him anymore for not knowing what I know now.
That may be part of my Let Them Theory too. Let your old selves have been wrong. Let them have wanted things that did not happen. Let them believe people who disappointed them. Let them write the embarrassing texts.
Especially the texts. God. Let them send the texts. They already did. There is nothing we can do now. Let them.
Then become someone who does not need to send the next one. That is growth. Not deleting the old person. Not pretending he never existed.
Just sitting beside him and saying, you do not have to explain it again. I understand. I am here now.
That feels very Still, by Design. to me. The stillness between things. Not a grand answer. Not winning. Not being perfectly understood. Simply noticing what belongs to you. And what does not.
This year has taken things from me. It has given me things too. I have a finished book. I have work that matters to me. I have people I love. I have a voice I am finally allowing to sound like my own.
I have made mistakes. I will make more. I am tired. I am becoming. And I am still here.
There is something very comforting about that sentence. Still here. Still making things. Still setting the table. Still putting coffee down in front of somebody. Still believing a room can be warmer because we passed through it.
I just no longer need everyone who passes through the room to agree about what happened there. Let them have their version. I will have mine. And somewhere between the two, there is probably the truth.
I do not need to drag it into the hallway tonight and make everybody inspect it. It is Sunday. We are tired. There will be time.
Tomorrow something will need doing. Somebody will arrive. Something will be unfinished. I will probably find a cup in a place a cup has no business being. And life will continue.
That is enough.
I am Avery Lane Maxwell. This is Galena House Audio. A Sunday Special.
Good Little Innkeeper is looking for representation. I am looking for a little sleep. I think both of us will find what we need.
Until then, let them have their version.
You keep becoming.
Thanks for listening. This was made at Galena House, in Frisco, Colorado.
Hear it read, in the author's voice · The film · The letters