I was answering interview questions last week when a line about past mistakes reminded me of something…

Once, editor Robin Rivers and I were handling the production of a gorgeous coffee table book of Canadian photography. Between the second printer proofs and the third, we missed the fact that a line of text had fallen off the page. Thousands of books were then printed with a half-finished sentence in the centre.

As Robin and I stared at each other, horrified, she said, “Well, at least we’re not neurosurgeons. No one died.”

I’ve had to repeat that line to myself MANY times since. It’s ridiculously easy to make mistakes — get a fact wrong, send an e-mail to the wrong person, prepare a proposal that you later realize is ridiculously misguided. And each time, when you finish banging your head on the nearest wall, you have to take a deep breath and thank God that you’re not a neurosurgeon.