Lesson from industry meetup - Always be the last to leave.

That way you can help clean up. Parting is such sweet sorrow, because this edited version of you is nicer and more positive than the 24/7 real version. You are your own tribute act - all the best bits and none of the filler, belted out like you are still having fun.

Because it IS fun.

When you care about the industry, you care about the people in it because they are the industry. Without us it's piles if cardboard and plastic. We bring the secret ingredient, the lightning from the gods, and if we are lucky we don't even get our livers pecked out by vultures.

Because the secret ingredient? It was us all along. It was the validation from the friends we made along the way.

Not everyone understands the nature of an industry. It needs all of us. We are all of us integral, the world poorer for our absence. Some seek to dominate their industry, to stride across it like a colossus. But what's the point of being king of shit, emperor of your own ego?

We work together to make it bigger, more welcoming, to expand horizons rather than contract them down to what we as stores can individually sieze.

If we don't see eye to eye? It's because you think the world would be better if you controlled it all. No. You'd be marginally richer and everyone else would be poorer. That doesn't seem like a recipe for happiness.

And make no mistake, that's what we all sell.