I want to write something honest here, which means starting somewhere uncomfortable.
For four years I've built a business around things I believed in. Good wool. Old denim. Pieces with provenance - the kind of density that only comes from being loved honestly and then released back into the world. I became very good at it. Learned to feel the difference between something made to last and something made to look like it would. Market by market, estate by estate, I was learning a language I couldn’t have named at the time, but I trusted it the way one trusts a compass they've never had reason to doubt.
Along the way something changed, something I wasn't able to place. Something subtle, a shift in taste, a low off-beat hum out of tune, a shallow breath.
It happened the way most compromises tend to - slowly, and then all at once. I was no longer happy with the way things were. So much was out of alignment for me, in ethics, in professionalism, in morality. It weighed on me more than I could have possibly known until I finally set it down. I stepped away from my vintage business because I knew I had to, even though I didn't want to. And in that space, things felt less like lightening a load and more like disorientation. I didn't know which way was up for awhile, akin to being tossed by a wave break much larger than you anticipated. I knew I had to sell what I had accumulated, but I just couldn't bring myself to even look at what I had, let alone list them and prepare them for their new homes. I had finally reached that terminal resting place where we all dread our passions to end up in - burnout.
Knowing I had to keep moving forward, needing to pay the bills and keep my energy going, I tried something new and picked up affiliate marketing. While the premise was sound, again, I found myself out of alignment - The algorithm dictating what moved, which meant selling toward what was moving, which meant drifting slowly away from the frequency I’d spent years learning to tune to. I was good at it, technically. The numbers said so. But you can’t carry Quality through a lens you don’t trust, and I started to notice the difference in my hands before I noticed it anywhere else. The weight of something I was putting up for sale because it would sell, not because I believed in it, felt different. Lighter in the wrong way. Like something slipping. Fragile.
I stopped. Not gracefully, not all at once. But I stopped.
There's this place between lifetimes that feels of the void, a world without form, directionless, floating. It's scary. And it brings about as many emotions as I have pieces left to sell. I always knew where I had to go, but not knowing how I'd get there has always been challenging to me. As a boy, I'd want to have everything figured out. I'd work on my mechanics. I'd learn every single detail of how and why a thing worked. Every screw. Every label. Every fiber. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance really put words to what I was experiencing in real time.
"An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality."
While it's such a beautiful and honorable desire to have everything figured out, it by design does a disservice to all that there is. Upon trying to have it all figured out, we mold and shape the pure nature and form of Quality into a thing that we may understand, that we can work with, that we're able to accept within our framework of reality. And the thing is, we're so very good at it, manipulating our surroundings to best suit us for survival. But to really thrive, to really get out there and be in it all, without a need to understand, to change, or to adjust what you're experiencing, that's where the truest of magics lie.
So for the past 6 months I've really allowed myself to feel everything. Even the hard things. Especially the hard things. And for what it's worth, it's allowed me to cultivate more embodied strength than I ever could have if I had stayed in the store that I created.
The vintage business was never going to be the last thing I built. I knew it well before even beginning - I wrote about it on my opening week, drawing parallels to the Alchemist and the journey toward one's Destiny. Am I proud of what I accomplished? Absolutely. Would I do things differently on my next go around? Without a doubt. The lessons I learned from the experience have sharpened my tools, my mind, and my spirit for what's to come next. The sourcing, the eye for what lasts, the willingness to carry something home that no one else stopped for: that was simply training. For what exactly, I couldn't have fully said at the time. But now, as I look back on the threads of my life, I realize that I was learning a language of the soul. Of Quality. Of Density. Gravity has a way of drawing one in without them even knowing it. And I've learned enough about gravity to know that when something pulls like that, you don't argue with it.
What I’m building toward is simpler and stranger and truer than anything I’ve sold so far. I like to imagine it as a ferry service toward one's destiny. What form that may take is still revealing itself to me through time, but what I know for sure is that I'm meant to help people remember what they were brought here for. Because, you see, Dreams are messages sent to us by God. They're given to us for a reason. And to set them down and forget them is doing a disservice to why we were born in the first place.
I help you remember who you were meant to be in this world. No matter the scale of the dream, if it was given to you, it's up to you to bring it to life. Your best life really is your birthright.