Anyway, as of yesterday, I have been walking around with the same feeling. Not that I have been making offspring, but I have been making books.
Now I've made stuff before: paintings, cakes, cookies, hand-crafted presents, and the like (this is apart from all the study-related stuff I've made, such as essays and endlessly transcribed editions of obscure medieval texts). I have even made books before, that is to say, I completed NaNoWriMo and other writing endeavours, and sometimes I've printed them out and handed them around.
But I've never really made a true book, with a cover and a title page and an opening and an ending and useful stuff in between. But as of yesterday, there are books in existence that I have made.
Not technically, of course, I haven't done any of the printing or putting-together. I'm not even that responsible for the content, as I haven't actually written a word that can be found in them. But I have managed the project that brought these books into being, from creating the concept, thinking up the graphic design, writing the texts, revising the texts, thinking up ideas for the pictures, then handing it over to the editors who made people draw the pictures and put it through to the typesetter who made it into a book file, which was then sent to the printer to be printed.
All these things were done by other people. But I am the only person who was involved in every step, and had influence on every step, and it is regarded by everyone as 'my' project, and hence when the books came in from the printer's yesterday they were brought to me and declared to be 'my' books.
This is not true at all, they were a team effort, a very nice effort at that, and I am very happy with the result. But still, I do have to agree that deep down, they do feel like 'my' books. Truly a 'I made dis' moment, which I hope I will experience many times more, maybe one day even with human offspring involved.
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