Photo Credits: Jessica Durrant Illustrations

A Beautiful, Powerful Truth.

About a year ago I saw a plane streaking through the sky — lyrics filled my mind — “How can you keep him down on the farm now that he’s seen Galee?” Last night I was reminded of the beauty and peace that comes from creating your own path, finding the way that’s right for you.

Even if alone.
Even if unsure.
It’s the journey of a lifetime.
And worthy of your brief time here in this life.

— Elle Luna

In 2013, I quit my job and was quite unhappy.

One night, I looked at my past work experiences and affiliations, as rewarding as they were, and thought,

Something’s missing.

What I learned the following year was one of my most important truths—

Somewhere in the mix of getting from point A to point B, I had lost myself in my own story.

You might wonder,

Well, how does one lose their own story? Aren’t you with yourself through the entirety of your life?

I think this is incredibly easy to do.

Coming from a first generation immigrant family, there are expectations layered on in the form of caring.

They sound like—

“You should be a (enter highfalutin job title here)!” or “You should have a respectable career!” or “You need to have good grades!”

What’s challenging is that I understand the context this advice comes from. I don’t blame them for their advice. But have realized that my reality, thankfully, can be somewhat different than theirs.

I’m sure even if you don’t come from a first-generation immigrant family, you have heard this before.

Because you don’t really know yourself that well when you are younger, this reality can seep into your belief system, what you choose to pursue, what you shy away from, how you define success, happiness and who you are.

These are the stories we tell ourselves.

Which is at odds with,

“…this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?”

— Mary Ruefle

In the past, I had let other externally motivating factors define who I was.

But a number of years out of college, this simply was not enough and things had to change.

So, this change came out in many random flavors. This came in me wanting to be an artist’s assistant for an illustrator. This came in the form of side-projects and hobbies. This came in the form of grabbing tea and coffee with many strangers. This came in the form of sending out emails to people whose work I was curious about.

But most importantly, this change came about when I realized my thinking had to change, that the only way to understand my truth, this “great weirdness” was to live out the following—

1. I must know my values and act accordingly. Thus, I must pick my values over any other external motivating factors (as shiny and beautiful as they may seem).
2. I will hold myself to a standard of grace, not perfection.
3. I must surround myself with the best possible people for this type of “work.”
4. I must change my old way of thinking.
5. I must not think I know myself too well or take myself too seriously.
6. I am not defined only by my work—rather, I am most shaped by the people I surround myself with and my life experiences.
7. I cannot rely on work, titles, awards to give me a sense of purpose, joy, belonging and identity. I give this to myself by the community, relationships that I have built for myself.
8. I have an obligation to my friends, family, community and work. But I will always have an obligation to myself and I will honor that always.
9. I must stop being so “busy” all the time so that I can focus on pinpointing what truly matters to me.
10. I cannot focus on the endpoint until I know what makes me come alive.
11. I know what makes me come alive when I move from a place of strength and curiosity.
12. Simply in the act of creating some weird, odd, random thing for myself, I start to see new possibilities. I create the next step.
13. Only I can take the necessary steps for myself.
14. I will push past my fear because what I want is on the other side of my fear. Honestly, it’s incredible how many excuses can get layered in here.
15. The opposite of fear is love, love for what you create.
16. Finally, I will slow down, because my life is never not now.

This is also incredibly hard to do.

But ultimately, we do get to choose what stories we tell ourselves.

There is an odd, scary and exhilarating satisfaction when you go all in on yourself. And also finding the community who comes to meet you along the way.

In the past year I have slowly, through a lot of trial and error, realized that I want to work in the intersection between food, travel, design, global community, creative storytelling & creating impact.

It sounds rather odd and nebulous and I am indeed far from shore. It will quite possibly be a lot more work and trying and confusion.

Yet I have never had more conviction in my life. And this makes me excited. I am loving every minute that I can experience and create something new.

I don’t have an endpoint beyond that but I am convinced that if I keep making and heading in this direction, something will come from all these experiences and turn into where I am supposed to be.

It’s simply time to show up to the world and be the best version of myself.

This is my truth.

Here’s to you, 2015.

Acknowledgements—To the beautiful, amazing friends, mentors and others who simply share their honest truth, you have played such a huge role in this. My life would not be the same were it not for you.