A business card is a funny little thing.  People throw them in fishbowls for free sandwiches, they exchange them at events, they buy special, shiny cases to hold them, and they find them in side pockets and overlooked nooks and crannies after being tucked away and long forgotten.  Business cards are disposable by nature.  You give them out and hope for the best.  You order them in large batches and use them to consolidate your information in a convenient little package.  Just a slip of rectangular paper with your personal data to be collected, consolidated, and consumed. 

I have been thinking a lot about business cards lately.  They may seem insignificant in our daily dealings, but I believe every one of them holds so much more than a phone number and an email address.  For each one, someone had to go through the trouble of painstakingly designing that tiny rectangle of data, of purchasing a box of them, of picking up a little pile of them and putting them in their pocket or purse or specially bought container.  Every card holds someone’s unique identity, a piece of their personal story.

The plain white, unglazed surface and gray lettering under a simple company logo might, on closer inspection, convey the excitement of a person’s first, grown-up job.  A hyper-designed, riotously colored card can carry the hopes and fears of a new business owner.  The years of hard work and drive to win a high-level position can be portrayed in a simple bladed graphic and bold black lettering.    

All business cards had their start in someone’s new beginning.  I realized my own new beginning the day I received my little box of new business cards in the mail.  They have my name in pretty looped letters, my favorite colors in the butterfly logo, and, of course, my consolidated data.  I’ll send them out into the world, one at a time, hoping for the best. 

But whether people keep them or throw them away, the important part is that they represent my declaration to the world that I am, as Julie Luek says, taking the leap.  Because under my name on these funny little cards they say Freelance Writer, Novelist, Blogger – I marvel that so few words can mean so much to me.