Errors in Context

When I started the Boy, This is hard series, I made clear that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves. I'm not always great at following my own advice, especially at work. That's another story, and not the one I want to tell today.

Approachable Open Source started its journey with A Book Apart, a very professional outfit. I mean, gorgeous production value, crisp messaging, stellar community, and true pedigree. Their confidence and support made the manuscript what it is today. I'm so grateful for the brief time I had with them. I took over with an already polished draft, having 3 rounds of editing complete. I decided to dust off my (professional? I was paid for it...) proofreading skills from the college writing lab and go it alone. This, honestly, feels a bit contrary to previous advice, but it aligned with my skillset, my critical impatience sense of urgency, and my deep desire to get this book done with an indy spirit. The message was more important than finding another publisher.

I found a great book producing partner and worked with them to explore, price, and finalize all the details. Megan helped make the cover, translating a very thorough front-back-spine cover template. I hadn't though much beforehand about how page count affects spine width. There's no way I could have done it with her confidence. She helped me iterate many, MANY times on full-bleed perfection, important to me. I joke about her being a Luddite, but she knows her graphic design stuff like nobody's business. The proof looked great, some tweaks were made, and then we were gold. PRINT!

Three weeks later I took the hour-long drive down to Mankato to pick up the books. Brad Frost assured me they'd fit in the van.

Once home, I was keen to give Megan a copy straight away. Turning over the book, inspecting its contents and cover, it was great to see, my work made real.

And then I saw it.

A typo. On the spine. Muenzemeyer On the cover! How could this be?! We'd spent so much time on it. So many eyeballs scanned this.

All this effort expended, and I make one of the most visible errors I can possibly commit. But as the saying goes, an error only becomes a mistake if you refuse to correct it. So yeah, I got a bunch of boxes of books with my named misspelled. To me, it's really, REALLY funny, and totally fitting. Why?

1. It's been hard to spell my whole life. Sorry boys!
2. One elementary school teacher even called us "Muenzenwear" instead, like a brand of clothing.
3. I've lost track of the number of times someone's tried calling out our name, stopped at the first syllable, and then said, "I'm not even going to try."
4. People routinely brag to me when they can spell it from memory. This literally happened last week from a coworker I've worked with for 3 years.
5. In roll call situations or sign-up events, we can usually scan the sheet upside-down and backwards and simply find the longest entry before the volunteer can.

Two more things make this apropos:

1. Brad's foreword alluded to the exact same thing, unprompted. "A few months into the project, this guy with a complicated last name and GitHub handle made an unassuming entrance: Brian Muenzenmeyer simply commented on one of Pattern Lab’s many GitHub issues to make a suggestion"
2. When I told my friend Bobby, he said, "that says a lot about your last name." Yes, yes it does.

A book can certainly be marred by typos and feel low-quality. I'm sure some will leave with that conclusion, as I do in my lowest accounting. But I wrote the thing, with heart, conviction, and a narrative that I am proud of. Perhaps it's a minor miracle it was completed at all. Platitudes about perfection being the enemy of done abound. If I delivered the whole text as a talk, I'd probably equally butcher some section of the message: my voice would spontaneously squeak like I was a teenager, I'd slur a phrase out of excitement, I'd commit a malapropism, or whatever. Anyone would. What you do in that moment is what matters.

My career in software development has conditioned me to see this as but a hiccup. It's a bug, a patch to add to the changelog. Owning your errors costs nothing; hiding mistakes is what catches up with you. I'm sure someone will notice and show me. I'll have this post to respond with. If we aren't looking back on the code or words we wrote last year, or last week, and finding something to improve, we're not growing. I tell my teams that all the time. I told you that Max last week when you questioned if you ever said that thing I quoted you in the book about. You did, and it's okay. It was endearing and you've had such a enduring interest in this work. Thank you.

Out of a necessity to store the books somewhere, they are stacked in the office. You can see them against the backdrop of art you kids bring home. I went down to Megan's office and snapped a photo of her art wall too:

This is the real stuff. The writing to elevate, the linework to save, work to cherish, the Muenzenmeyers to celebrate. Looking at my typo in that context, the error seems inconsequential.