One year ago, I changed the way I talked to all of you.

For years, the newsletter was pretty simple. I wrote something, dropped it into an email, hit send, and off it went into the world.

I talked to you, and that was the end of the communication.

Then we moved everything over to this Ghost platform.

Suddenly, instead of simply opening an email and reading from top to bottom, you were clicking through to a real home for the newsletter. You could leave comments. You could interact with each other. You could jump around to different stories, revisit old ones, download photos, and wander through everything we had built together.

And let me tell you something: not everybody was thrilled.

Some of you hated the extra click.

Some of you told me so.

Some of you probably muttered things under your breath that were best left unsent.

And I understood.

Change is funny that way. Even when something eventually turns out to be better, it can be annoying as hell while you're getting used to it.

But a year later, I can look back and say that the change was worth it.

More people are opening the newsletter. Stories no longer disappear into the black hole of an inbox. You can go back and find something I wrote six months ago. We can offer monthly photo downloads. I can see which stories are actually being read and which ones apparently bored everybody senseless.

Most importantly, the newsletter has become less like an email and more like a little community.

And I thought that was the big lesson from this first year.

It wasn't.

Sometimes the Problem You Don't See Is the Most Important One

For most people, the new newsletter worked beautifully.

But not for everybody.

Many of you know Joe from our coffee talks. Joe is sight-impaired, and this new format that worked so well for most of us was incredibly difficult for him to navigate.

That bothered me.

So I started trying things.

I changed templates.

I adjusted formatting.

I copied and pasted articles into different forms.

For more than eleven months, I tried one workaround after another.

Some helped a little. None really solved the problem.

And through all of it, Joe was extraordinarily patient with me.

He never came at me with anger. He never demanded that I magically understand what his experience was like. Instead, he gently explained what worked, what didn't work, what his screen reader was doing, and where he was getting stuck.

In other words, he let me into his world.

That may have been the greatest gift of this entire experience.

Because there are things we simply cannot understand until somebody trusts us enough to explain how the world looks — or sounds, or feels — from where they're standing.

Then My Brain Did What My Brain Does

Eventually I created an online tool that helped me compose the newsletter.

And one day a little lightbulb went off.

I thought, If this thing can compose the newsletter, why couldn't it also compile the newsletter?

That sent me down another rabbit hole.

The question suddenly wasn't, How do I make Joe use what I've already built?

The question became:

How can I build something that works for Joe?

That is a completely different question.

Joe and I spent many mornings emailing, texting, calling, testing, changing things, breaking things, fixing things and saying some version of, "Okay... try it now."

Eventually, we got there.

We found a solution that allows him to experience the newsletter in a way that actually works for him.

And I cannot properly explain how satisfying that felt.

One of the Best Compliments I've Ever Received

In my 62 years, I've received a handful of compliments that have stuck with me.

For years, my favorite was, "You are fearless."

A friend said that to me after seeing me perform onstage. Coming from him, it meant a great deal.

But recently, Joe gave me another compliment that landed just as deeply.

He told me, essentially:

"I've never met anybody so willing to solve a problem."

I sat with that one.

Because he's right.

I really do love solving problems.

I especially hate seeing somebody left out when I know there might be a way to bring them in.

I hate unnecessary barriers.

I hate the sentence, "Well, that's just the way it is," when the truth is that maybe nobody has bothered trying hard enough yet.

And this experience reminded me of something important:

Accessibility isn't about creating something special for somebody. It's about making sure the door opens wide enough for everybody.

The Lesson Was Never Really About a Newsletter

This whole story started with software.

It started with moving an email newsletter onto a different platform.

But somewhere along the way, it became a lesson about listening.

It became a lesson about patience.

It became a lesson about being willing to admit that something can work perfectly well for 99 people and still fail the hundredth.

And that hundredth person matters.

Sometimes we become defensive when somebody tells us that what we've created doesn't work for them.

We hear criticism.

Maybe we should hear an invitation instead.

An invitation to see something we couldn't see before.

An invitation to learn.

An invitation to build something better.

Joe gave me that invitation.

What a Gift

So today, on the first anniversary of this newsletter, I find myself feeling incredibly grateful.

I'm grateful to all of you who trusted me when I changed things a year ago — even if you weren't particularly happy with me at first.

I'm grateful for every comment you've left, every story you've read, every photo you've downloaded and every time you've wandered backward through an old issue looking for something that stayed with you.

And I'm especially grateful to Joe.

Because he trusted me enough to say, "This isn't working for me."

Then he trusted me enough to show me why.

That allowed me to experience, in some tiny way, how somebody else moves through the world.

What an extraordinary privilege that is.

Maybe that's the real lesson from this first year.

Progress doesn't always come from having the smartest idea.

Sometimes it comes from listening carefully enough to somebody else's experience.

Sometimes it comes from refusing to accept that a problem can't be solved.

And sometimes it comes from realizing that the thing you built is only truly successful when the people standing at the edges can come inside too.

One year later, this newsletter has become something much bigger than the emails I used to send.

It has become a conversation.

It has become an archive of our little corner of the world.

It has become a community.

And, thanks to Joe, it has become a little more welcoming too.

I think that's pretty darn cool.

Happy anniversary, everybody.

And thank you for trusting me enough to keep building this thing with you.