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artifactsweshared · 7 years

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I suppose it will take me a while to decompress from all the things that have happened in this week that I have been here. It will likely be an ongoing processing. Somewhere in between my 9 hour bus ride tomorrow and 21 hour flight home, I think I will get to a point of understanding. There are some thoughts now in my head and I thought I would share.

1/ Travel: It has been some time since I felt the feeling of travel. Do you know what I mean by it? A sense of freedom, of wonderment and wanderlust, of constant exploration and endless bounty. There is always more adventure to be had. One more hour awake, one more alleyway to explore, one more view to take in. It is the most seductive life and it is a life that I intentionally chose to optimize for since 19.

I think back a lot these days to my decision to move back to SF, the promises I made myself, the challenge I gave myself, to try to stay somewhere, for a while. Because there is fulfillment of a different kind that I get from staying and it is what I will always be missing when I travel. It is the feeling of being missed, not just the “i miss you” you say casually to someone that you met for a week but the kind of missing that comes from someone who is deeply integrated into your life and you into theirs. The feeling of knowing that your life would be fundamentally different without someone in it. Now when I travel I look forward to going home, versus before, when I did not have a sense of home to go back to and I was a free electron floating in the magnetic field, attracted to everything but without a solid direction. It is the feeling of being lost as you are enraptured but the enrapture is a distraction from the loneliness of belonging nowhere to no one.

I needed to be nomadic to know SF as a home was the right thing for me and I still believe it is the right thing. Every time I fly back, as we are crossing over the Bay, driving down Highway 101, I smile and I remember why I moved here. SF is such a special place. Of all the places I have been and lived, SF stands on its own and I fall back in love with it every time. It is nice, to finally feel that way, about somewhere. It is what I experience when I am in love. No matter where I go, far or close to them, every time I see them I fall in love with something different because they are constantly evolving and we are constantly evolving but the love is there. That is a most powerful feeling.

2/ Community: I talk a lot about community and my entire facebook and instagram feed is community and it has without a doubt been the defining element of my adult life. Because I did not have it growing up. I felt the same loneliness I felt when I was nomadic, belonging nowhere and finding some peace and space in the in-betweens. I am at the transition of an era of community in my life, and I can think of no better way to end and begin the chapter than this week. To see how legit and magical the community is to others gives me so much hope, so much fulfillment. I do not need to feel it myself, and to be honest, I did not feel it at the Summit itself so much. It was a bit of a weird experience. Being on stage and being seen but only superficially and to have all these superficial interactions that are framed as meaningful. I did get closer to a few people but they are people I have known from before. I got much closer to Tia and that relationship I treasure. I hope we continue to be friends and we meet in life again. I admire a great deal bout her - beautiful, charismatic, emotional, but hella focused on getting it done and making it happen. We are different, we complement well, and it is good to see, that I can be visionary in the engine room, I find great meaning from designing the backend systems to keep the vision going, to sustain it.

But I feel it now, in this small group of 12 lovely people, but to see that we have built and created something that gives so much love and support to 1300 people -- that is impact. That is change. I went back and forth a lot on the value of doing it for free. All this work, this time over the past 4 years. And by god, it takes 4 years. It takes four years to know something, someone, well enough to be able to shape it, to have confidence in what you are good at and then to execute the fuck out of it. They call me chief whip for a reason and I embrace that name fully.

I didn’t tell anyone this but when I was 22, I set a goal for myself, that I would work on change at a community level. And I did it. I can really say that 4 years later, I did it. God it feels good. And I don’t need a youtube video or award or some bullshit, because I just did this for me. For my own journey in life. And now that I have realized this dream, I can move on to new ones.

I am reminded these past few days of the trip we took to Minas Gerais with FIS. The week of only Portuguese that helped me become fluent. The week of driving long hours in vans listening to music and joking in the backseat with Edu and Marcelo, who became my dearest, dearest friends. The long tables we filled in restaurants in the middle of nowhere, the sunsets and sunrises we watched from car windows. The deep conversations in Portuguese, on the philosophy of life and sustainability and the dancing and the joy, god, the pure fucking joy of being alive with a group of people who amaze you. The feeling of being isolated from the world but together - god, the most beautiful feeling.

This entire experience was very intentionally platonic for me. The friendship love and community love are such powerful loves for me and I remember when I was in Brazil I only had platonic love and it was without a doubt the happiest time in my life. Perhaps I have too much love to give to just one person, and community lets me love many at once. Of course it is a different type of love, but it is the feeling of being connected to a wider, larger, beautiful fabric, to feel connected to humanity. Whereas a partner is about someone who builds and creates with you a special unique universe and holds you close at night.

It was important that it was platonic as my romantic love lives in one place now and I am at peace with holding it safe in a box for some time until it can be realized again. I am at peace with it.

When I articulate this to people I think they worry I am numbing myself but I do not feel numb. I don’t feel like I need time to “get over” Sandbox or the things that happened this year, I just want to keep moving forward towards the light. To be resilient, to instill confidence and calm in others when chaos abounds, that is where I can help the most. I feel very clear in my head and heart. It could be the beautiful blue Mediterranean waters and the sun on my skin giving me a sense of peace and calm but I believe the outer state is a reflection of the inner state.

3/ Dreams: I feel most strongly, above all else, that this next 5 years of my life, I will dedicate fully to building prosper/us and realizing this dream. It is by and far the most important thing in my life and I feel very ready to pursue it fully. That is the most liberating thought of all, to give myself permission to be in it so deeply and not be distracted by other projects and even, travel. (Travel is good, but travel is also distracting). In 5 years I will make it massively successful and then I will exit and I will come back to this cafe in Dubrovnik and hopefully I will be surrounded by love and I will plot my next move. Holding myself accountable here to this commitment.

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