When the publisher of the Journal asked if I would join the staff as a reporter in February of this year, I laughed right out loud. I already felt like I had gone out on a limb when I reached out to Heather Spaulding about freelancing now and then. I was still going through my divorce, homeschooling my kids and attempting, in the very smallest way, to maybe consider perhaps broaching the tiniest idea of possibly working outside the home for the first time since entering motherhood a decade ago.

Truthfully, I was scared. This wouldn’t be just jumping into something new and shaking off the cobwebs – although that in itself was terrifying. It would be doing that IN FRONT of people. Loudly. The potential for exposure (humiliation, even?) was stark. I had to decide if I was ready for the entire island (and world, via the good old World Wide Web) to witness my attempts at stepping outside of my comfort zone. I decided I would attempt, but made few promises.

The First Friday Art Walk project is one of those attempts. Initially, I was just trying to put a group ad in the paper so the galleries could get some inexpensive advertising by splitting the cost. But then I started talking to people and hearing what was going on and realized some support was needed. Maybe a little oomph. Someone with an intense, annoying voice, perhaps? Who isn’t afraid to make the calls and write the posts and get things moving?

We started with a small ad with eight galleries included (who had grassroots-started the Art Walk on their own the year before and turned it into what it is today), and in only a few months have grown to a four-page spread of Friday Harbor creative goodness in the Journal. It’s EXCITING. It’s happening!

It’s possible because of where we live.

I often hear islanders lament the lack of opportunity here. It’s small, we don’t have many amenities, everywhere is short-staffed, most of us wear multiple hats at our jobs for too little pay. But. There is another side to that coin. Because it’s so small, because there are too many hats and not enough heads – I’d argue we actually have a lot more opportunity here than other places.

Here, any little effort has a big impact. As a journalist (who may not have been given a chance at this job in a larger market), I’ve heard firsthand the stories of islanders turning ideas into reality again and again.

This Art Walk spread has been seriously inspiring. I’m listening to local bands’ original music as I write about them, marveling at the connection that can happen between strangers when one speaks/sings/plays a piece of their heart out loud and another is willing to hear it. I’m looking at a painting and hearing what the artist can’t unsee in it. Learning what a tapestry taught the weaver. Editing a contributor’s writing about their own work and shedding a tear at the care they take in their words about what they created. Watching the face of a local photographer when she sees her work on the cover of our visitors guide for the first time.

I’m touched by our little community. By the do-ers. By the creators. I feel grateful to be in such a small pond where we can all be big fish and make big moves. I feel lucky to be the pen that gets to share the words you’re speaking when we are sitting one-on-one in the space you created, or next to the piece you turned from imagination into something tangible and then offered to the world.

I hope you know that I hold our time together as something sacred. And that while I am still afraid of you all witnessing my inevitable missteps in unerasable ink, I’m following your examples and going for it. Here’s to you. To this island. To the fishbowl of a small town – and the immense good that comes from letting ourselves be seen.