Hi All!

Here is your weekly round up of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along to a friend if you think they might enjoy.

Kyle

It’s Sunday morning, and once again I’m outside writing this weeks newsletter.

I tried writing at my desk but I couldn’t help but get out into the sun, especially after a huge week of rain.

On Friday I watched my favourite cousin Kyle be laid to rest, and for the first time in my life felt grief.

It’s a weird feeling I can’t quite describe but when I look up to the sky and see the sun shining on me, I can still feel his smile.

He was one of the most genuine people I’ve ever known, which was probably the reason why close to a thousand people turned up to the funeral to celebrate his life.

I could go on forever about him, but I’ll keep it short, and respect his life by trying to emobody his most beautiful qualities and continue to make the most of mine.

I’m going to miss you cuz.

Around the corner

Send that email.

Text that person.

Follow up.

Go to that event.

Strike up a conversation with a stranger.

Finish that idea that’s been sitting in your head.

Because you never know what’s right around the corner.

All it takes is one moment, one connection, or one chance, that can change the course of your life.

That’s why under any and all circumstances you can’t lose hope.

Because tomorrow might be the day.

Alignment

I’m finally learning how to find and foster parterships that not only help you, but mutually benefit both parties.

In the past I’d think only of me, when approaching a company, brand, or person, and sometimes this worked.

However, the missing piece was thinking about the other party and what their incentives were.

Which brings me to what I believe has helped me to finally start securing support for my book.

Aligned incentives.

I realised I needed to think deeply about why anyone at all should care about what I have to offer.

Which is exactly why instead of trying to immediatly take my story global, I plan on planting it here, locally, and letting it grow outwards from where it was born.

This is why I’ve reached out to my local bookstores, because in a way, it relates to them and the communities they exist within, so why wouldn’t they want to support local talent?

And so far, my hypothesis has been correct.

Let’s see if the next one also is…

Reading is alive and well

Recently I went to a book fair, and what I saw completely shattered all of my ideas about the death of reading.

Before I got to the event I was expecting not too many people, and tonnes of free space to roam all the books on sale.

However, when I arrived I was met with literally hundreds of people crammed in, browsing books, and stuffing them into their totebags.

It was a frenzy in there.

I didn’t realise so many people read.

There were kids, adults, guys, girls, grandpas, grandmas, literally everyone you can imagine.

And to see the joy on all their faces when they found a title that was on their to be read list, wow.

If anything, this gave me so much confidence with where reading is going over the next decade.

And I think it might be safe to say that readership is actually growing, thanks to social media, and has probably been as popular as it’s been in a long time.

Very exciting times, especially as an author about to publish his first novel.

This impossible moment

Thought the passage I found here on X was quite beautiful, and wanted to share it with you.

“I exist because ten thousand strangers made choices they will never know mattered, because my grandmother chose love over fear in 1943, because a bird flapped its wings when my parents were deciding whether to have children, because every breath I take was exhaled by trees planted by dead men, because the coffee that woke me this morning grew from soil fed by ancient bones. I am not one person but the sum of infinite accidents, the product of countless prayers and curses and forgotten moments, a walking miracle of interconnected causes stretching back to the first star, and when I touch your hand I am touching the endpoint of every choice ever made, the culmination of every love story and tragedy that had to happen exactly as it did for our fingers to meet in this impossible moment.”

Hope everyone enjoys their week.

Love,

Jet Williams

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