Ever since I wrote the text for my home page, I’ve been having second (and third, and fourth) thoughts. I see around me every day people causing harm by ‘centering’ certain types of growth. Streaming services expecting unlimited growth in views and viewers, venture capitalists pursuing unlimited growth in profits, empires seeking unlimited growth of power and influence. I also see how the drive for unlimited growth (of converts, of power, of borders) fueled the conflict-centered worldview that I turned to growth to /avoid/.
I considered changing the home page. Maybe talk about the cycles that growth is part of, homeodynamics, that sort of thing. It didn’t work, didn’t fit. Growth, for me, is central. Central to my life and central to my writing.
It is, I think, a different kind of growth. Not a growth that can be measured with metrics, plotted on graphs, or translated to profits. And it is a growth that is necessary.
I spent more than half my life like a bonsai tree: trapped in a too-small space, twisted to grow in the direction and shape others chose. Worse, because an experienced bonsai grower works with the tree, they don’t force growth with no consideration or respect for the tree’s nature and needs.
I spent more than half my life being told that my stories needed more conflict. Conflict for the sake of conflict. Because it’s not a story without conflict.
Why center growth?
Because I am reclaiming it.
I am sinking my roots deep into the earth, spreading my branches wide. I am saying to hell with conflict and their fucked up definition of ‘story’. I am creating my own stories, where conflict isn’t part of the definition and characters grow, like I grow, simply because growth is beautiful. Simply because we deserve the chance to be better. To be us.
That is why I am centering growth.