//There are a handful of new Fidget ballpoint pens, four Bebes, and one Banded Moon Phase Bebe in Dark Sky in the shop as of tonight.

There is a popular Latin phrase I’m fond of: Per aspera, ad astra. It translates, generally, as: through difficulties, to the stars. We reach the heights of the stars only by meeting and rising above difficulties, challenges, and yes, situations that show us where we are inadequate. The stars we reach for reveal and shine light on where we have room to grow – where we have to grow if we are going to reach those stars.

That’s the first difficult part about shooting for the stars: facing that we have to grow, and admitting that we might not know how to do that. To admit to ourselves that, to reach our stars, we have to set out with no map, no teachers. Just us, stumbling about, making mistakes, confronting our own ego, and choosing to keep going through it – per aspera, ad astra.

I have, possibly more than most, learned most things per aspera – through difficulty; the hard way. Which is to say that I have taught myself most things – from self-paced and self-directed courses in high-school, to parenting, to painting, to pen turning, to jewelry, to 3D design, to electroforming and plating – with inadequate resources and insufficient support and mostly alone, and mostly through extensive trial and error.

It’s been worth it.

I’ve had the freedom to dig into the parts I was most curious about at length, to take my time when something didn’t make sense, and I was free to test unconventional approaches that other people said couldn’t be done – without ever worrying about if it could be done. There’s so much potential in not knowing what’s possible… and in not knowing what someone else has decided is impossible. Possibly more in not knowing – if we always listened to what someone else told us was possible, what someone else told us we were capable of, if we always shied away from something that would take us failing repeatedly in order to grow, to avoid the temporary experience of shame and embarrassment, where would we be?

Watching the latest news from deep space telescopes, hearing about the delays on the Artemis II rocket launch because of newly discovered repairs or adjustments that need to be made, I have a feeling I know exactly where we’d be if we backed away from difficult things.

Per aspera, ad astra,

– A. Markov