001 | A Morning Thought

Directly from my notebook

I don’t have a quote today, but I am going to source one right now from the Nitch account on Instagram. A Marianne Faithful quote seems fitting as she just passed away last week:

I've got to where I've always wanted to be. I just feel more myself...and I've learned to not care what other people think. It's happened slowly, very slowly...But I did it.

So, as I as writing this quote, which is a beautifully introspective thought, I was struck by the idea of death, and passing away, as Marianne just did. Those obvious thoughts and questions like where do we go when we pass away - do we all go to different places? Are we the same? Does the soul carry on through - in a different body, with a different mind, but the same soul nonetheless? The latter is definitely a possibility, or maybe possibility isn’t the right word, but a feasibility instead. You live one life as an artist, a singer/songwriter perhaps, and wake up the next morning as the CEO of a mid-size trucking corporation. Sometimes I feel like it even happens in this life, already. As you grow older, and each day fades into night, and back into day, over and over again, it can feel as though the memory of that evening five years ago is from a different life. A life where you were a college student, where you were a tennis player, a life where you were a chef, or where you were a start-up founder. So many lives, that in the moment feel like just one, but in retrospect seem to be so many more.

I have always said a dream of mine is to live as many lives as possible. What’s it like to be a police man? A pilot or a poet? A taxi-cab driver or a hedge-fund manager? A surf instructor in Hawaii or a furniture designer in Mexico City? I’ve always been told I can’t do everything I want to do, and be good at it all. It started when I was twelve years old, playing hockey and tennis, and being told I needed to pick one. I remember exactly where I was sitting, on the stairs in my family home, under the pressure of a decision that at twelve felt like I was deciding the entire trajectory of my life, and I just blurted out tennis. Why? I couldn’t really tell you - it was one word over the other, two words for activities that I loved, equally. In a way, I was in fact deciding the journey for rest of my life, for the decision to specialize, and become a tennis player, defined my path for the next eight years to follow. And then, at the beginning of my sophomore year at UT, I retired, and no longer knew where to go. So I started cooking, and became a chef. But I also became a DJ, and a pledge trainer, and a start-up founder, and a boyfriend, and a dog-father. And then, once again, I was told I couldn’t do it all. In some respects this is true. I probably could’ve been a better dog-father, definitely a better boyfriend at times, but I felt fulfilled, and busy. I loved waking up with a day ahead that had no room for nothing, sometimes not even waking up and just moving from one night into day, sleepless but ready to go. That said, I succumbed to the pressure to, once again, specialize, and dove head first into the fire of one of the best new restaurants in the country. And it was incredible, a whirlwind of stress, good stress, with a ceaseless drive to succeed, prove to myself and others that I am good, and talented, and disciplined. It lasted for a while, until once again, I felt that I needed to be doing other things. I loved to cook, still love to cook, but I also love photography, art, design, travel - the act of creating in general. So I retired from being a professional cook to pursue a career in fashion, at a company unlike any other, and in a position that would, for the first time, allow me to scratch every creative itch I have, with the freedom that if I can make it happen, I will.

Now, for the first time, I specialize in everything I can. I don’t have much anxiety about the world, about people, or the unknowns of life, but I do have anxiety about not using all my time, everyday, to do great things. No trying, just doing. This doesn’t mean no failing and only succeeding, but not trying and just doing. There is a vulnerability that must exist in this framework, it’s a thought matrix that a wonderful lady just taught me. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable, give yourself the opportunity to succeed, there is no failure, just the wrong conditions for success - and that is okay, because it’s not in your control, and maybe next time the conditions will still be wrong, but don’t give up, because one day they will be there, and it will all work out. So, now, I say yes to everything. Be a writer for a bi-weekly publication on culture, yes, be a chef for a creative start-up dinner series, yep, be a DJ that curates a journey through melody, yes, be a street/fashion photographer and a marathon runner, yes and yes. And while I’m certainly not the best at these things, far from it, I am pretty good, good enough to feel fulfilled and decent about what I am creating. Of course, I am never satisfied, a good and a bad thing at different times, but I am following some path. I have no idea where it leads, what’s left or right, forward or backward, and I am also blindfolded with headphones on, but I go where I feel, and so far it’s been okay.

There isn’t an end to this, these were just my thoughts this morning in my notebook, but I thought it might resonate with others. So now you can relate, or not, which is totally cool, but if you do, let me know, we can chat.