Celebrating Food And Entrepreneurship In San Francisco

27 Aug

La Cocina’s Fourth Annual San Francisco Street Food Festival

Sea of foodies on Folsom Street, San Francisco Street Food Festival, August 18, 2012

Last Saturday afternoon, within a week of moving to San Francisco, I found myself floating in a sea of 80,000 food lovers on Folsom Street in the Mission, for the Fourth Annual San Francisco Street Food Festival, presented by La Cocina, a nonprofit incubator kitchen whose mission is to cultivate low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize their businesses with a focus on women of color and immigrant communities.

The Street Food Festival was foodie paradise, with over 80 vendors spread along six blocks, selling small bites for $3 and big bites for $8.  And I was wearing a walkie-talkie and a bright turquoise t-shirt that said CAPTAIN on the back, which basically meant I could do whatever I wanted, which was eat everything in sight; hand-pulled garlic bread with burrata from State Bird Provisions—served with a spicy summer tomato giardiniera—I ate two, the best damm cheeseburger from 4505 Meats, lumpia from Hapa SF, sweet potato fries from Liba Falafel, beyond spicy pork ribs from , a chicken mole tostada from El Buen Comer, a peanut tofu taco from Azalina’s, sweet potato pie from Yvonne’s Southern Sweets, and a chocolate cupcake from La Luna Cupcakes. 

Hand-pulled garlic bread with burrata from State Bird Provisions

Founded in 2005, and led by executive director , La Cocina’s vision is that by supporting food entrepreneurs, they will become economically self-sufficient and contribute to a vibrant economy doing what they love.  There are currently 33 food businesses in the La Cocina incubator program, and 35 La Cocina businesses were serving at this year’s Street Food Festival.  The incubator program serves low-income entrepreneurs, and offers resources including affordable commercial kitchen space, mentoring in key business areas like online marketing and operations, access to farmer’s markets, catering jobs, and wholesale distribution, and other capital opportunities.  

Night Market at Alemany Market

I had the opportunity to volunteer at La Cocina for two days leading up to the Street Food Festival, and then welcome hungry (and chilly) guests as they entered the at Alemany Market last Friday night.  The Night Market, a fundraiser for La Cocina, featured dishes from over 20 vendors including empanadas made from scratch by El Sur that rivaled the scores of empanadas I used to eat while living in Buenos Aires, a Russian soup with cured meats and pickles by Anda Piroshki that stopped the Alemany wind and warmed the soul, and Korean braised oxtail with daikon, carrots, dates, and hard boiled egg, by , which was so sweet and tender I had to sit down and close my eyes for five seconds. 

Bacon and peanut crusted chocolate cake pops by Matt Jennings, Farmstead

The day after the Street Food Festival, I volunteered at at SOMArts Cultural Center.  The Conference featured panel discussions on female restauranteurs, introducing new ethnic food flavors, how to write effectively about your own food (you better write something really good on the label if you want me to buy your $8 chocolate bar), creating spaces for successful food entrepreneurship, and using technology and social media to grow your food business.  Delicious food was served as well, including bagels and gravlax cured to perfection by Sal de Vida Gourmet, honey lemon thyme biscotti from , bacon and peanut crusted chocolate cake pops by , and Nepalese chicken and rice cooked by Bini Adiga, owner of Bini’s Kitchen, one of La Cocina’s program participants. 

Adriana Almazán-Lahl, Founder of Sal de Vida Gourmet

All too often when we talk about food or go to food festivals or read “Tables For Two” in The New Yorker, we only hear about the pecorino and the foie gras and the pork belly and the $100 prix fixe.  In San Francisco—where there is no shortage of gourmet restaurants and craft food trucks and pop-ups serving all the delicacies that a foodie could dream of and more—La Cocina is working hard to ensure that celebrating food is about more than enjoying the burrata.  It’s important for all of us to remember that food is about building community; food is about bringing diverse groups together, empowering others, increasing access to affordable healthy and delicious food for all, and creating opportunities for low-income entrepreneurs, as they start food businesses and share their inspiring stories through food. 

Food trucks arrive early at La Cocina

To learn more about La Cocina, or if you are interested in applying for their incubator program, check out lacocinasf.org.

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San Francisco Is Beautiful

16 Aug

(And other Week 1 observations from an East Coast transplant)

Dolores Park

Last Thursday morning I hopped on a Virgin America flight and moved from Boston to San Francisco, with two suitcases of clothes, my laptop, a frisbee, the July 23 issue of The New Yorker, a Timbuk2 shoulder bag that my sister gave me, and a neon green bike helmet. 

Have you ever flown Virgin America?  It’s bliss; it’s the closest a not-rich American like me can come to feeling like they’re doing all right in life.  You walk on the plane and it’s like you’re at a spa run by Thievery Corporation.  The overhead lights are purple.  Some real chill electronic music is playing in the background, and a cool breeze is flowing from above (or below—perhaps both).  The leather seats (in coach!) are comfortable, the leg room is spacious, the red pocket (which includes an inner mesh bag) is perfect for holding a magazine and a Moleskine and a water bottle, the latch on the tray table works perfectly, even the little red puke bag is cute.  By the time they play that wonderful animated safety video (“In the .0001% chance that you don’t know how to put on a seatbelt…”), everyone on the plane looks like they just got a massage.

The purple lights dim, and it’s time to sleep—or use the sauna— your choice.  I sleep, and when I wake up I read Junot Díaz’ piece The Cheater’s Guide To Love, which makes me feel slightly nervous about being single while all my friends are getting engaged and married, but his line, “When winter rolls in, a part of you fears that you’ll fold—Boston winters are on some terrorism shit—but you need the activity more than anything, so you keep at it…,” reaffirms my decision to move to California.  Junot Díaz is raw, brutal, and real; his prose oscillates between the casual and the prolific so naturally, so easily, that the conversation you just had at the bar with your boy, the conversation on the street between two nobodys, instantly becomes poetry. 

Then the pilot gets on the mic and says, “We’re about 30 minutes early as we make our descent into the San Francisco area.  That’s how we roll here at Virgin America.”  Indeed.  And I’m in California. 

People here are so nice, everyone is happy in San Francisco.

The first thing I notice about SF is that everyone here is so nice, so happy to be here, so happy to be alive.  Now, to be fair, I’m coming from spending the most of the previous 29 years of my life living on the East Coast, so a happiness comparison may be unfair. 

First, the Virgin America flight attendant strikes up a conversation with me as we’re making our descent, welcomes me to the Bay, and says “you’ve finally seen the light my friend, you’re gonna love it here!”  Then, when I’m getting my bags at baggage claim, a very attractive young woman strikes up a conversation with me, welcomes me to paradise, and offers to watch my bags while I check to see if my friend Zeb is there to pick me up.  When Zeb arrives he gives me a huge hug, and I throw my arms up in the air, kiss the sky, and scream “I LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO!” and another group of three (attractive) women give a rousing applause and respond, “Welcome, welcome to San Francisco!”  What is this, a fairy tale?  Have I died and gone to heaven?  (Yes.)

Usually, when I land at Logan Airport in Boston, I am greeted by a bitter bus driver yelling, “Get the fuck on the bus kid!  Next staaaap, South Station!  I didn’t have my ahhhh Dunkin ahhhh Donuts coffee this morning, and the Red Sox have lost three in a row, go fuck yaself!”  No such harshness in SF, only love. 

I never know what to wear.

Fog on the San Francisco Bay Trail

Weird does not even begin describe the weather in San Francisco.  Microclimates = what the fuck.  When I got off the plane at SFO wearing jeans and a t-shirt, I wished I had worn my cut-off shorts because it was 75 degrees and sunny, absolutely perfect weather.  Then, Zeb drove me up to Twin Peaks to check out the view of the city and the wind was brutal and I was like dammit, where’s my flannel shirt?  An hour later, we were sitting in the sun on a bench in Golden Gate Park and I was hot again and had to roll up my jeans. 

When we got back to my house in NoPA, the fog started to roll in and it felt like a storm was coming and I had to bust out my hoodie and slippers, my body was freezing.  Then, the next morning I had coffee sitting in the warm California sun, and it was once again, 75 degrees and sunny with a breeze.  But, sure enough, later that afternoon, the fog rolled in and I put on my fleece again.  So, yes, as the San Franciscans say:  always bring a jacket with you, always. 

San Francisco is beautiful.

Alamo Square Park

If anything, the constantly changing weather only increases the natural beauty of this city.  To watch the morning fog fade away to bright blue sky, on my morning run in the wild jungle that is Golden Gate Park, is a joy.  There is beauty everywhere you look (everywhere you look): the painted Victorians, the palm trees, the eucalyptus trees, laying out in the hot Mission sun starting at the city from Dolores Park, the fog obscuring all but the bottom third of the Golden Gate Bridge from Crissy Field, the bikers zooming through the Panhandle, smiles on the faces of couples spending Sunday morning at Thorough Bread & Pastry, the avocado in my garlic shrimp burrito at Little Chihuahua (a gringo burrito, not a real burrito, I was told, but call me a gringo, it was delicious), the piece of mint perched on top of my cup of Philz coffee (no coffee has ever given me such a rush—I nearly ran down 24th St. like a mad man after three sips), the green compost bins in front of every house on trash day, beauty is everywhere in San Francisco. 

Nobody asks “what do you do?” 

Having spent the last three years living in Washington, DC, I grew accustomed to answering the requisite, “So what do you do?”  If you ever happen to find yourself anywhere in the Dupont Circle vicinity, it may take someone less than (not joking) five seconds to ask what you do.  In fact, I once met a woman in DC who asked me for my business card before she even shook my hand, before she even got my name, as if actually even meeting me was dependent on what my job title was. 

Not so in SF.  People just say hi to you and what’s up, and through the course of talking about what neighborhood you live in or where you used to live or what you’re interested in (walking around, climbing, biking, blogging, eating good food, gardening, coding, Beck, apps) you maybe get into “what do you do,” but that’s like 15-20 minutes into the conversation.  What someone does for money does not define them or their reason for being.  People out here would much rather talk about what they care about, and so would I. 

I have no idea what to call my neighborhood.

I live two blocks North of the Panhandle, in what, according to Google, is now called “NoPA.”  However, when I told a San Franciscan that I lived in NoPA, she rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s just what bourgeois people call it since there is a delicious restaurant called NOPA and the gentrifiers don’t like saying Western Addition.”  But then when I told another local that I lived in Western Addition, they were like, “Dude, you don’t live in Western Addition, you live in NoPA.”  Another friend just told me to play it safe and say, “By the Panhandle.” 

Call it what you will, it’s amazing, I love its mellow mood, the painted houses, my wonderful roommates, the smell of eucalyptus, and that I can basically step outside and be inside Golden Gate Park.

San Franciscans take their bikes and their bike signs seriously.  (Helmets, not so much).

I knew people in SF were into bikes, but I’m not sure I realized just how obsessed they were.  Everyone has a bike.  Everyone.   And not only that, everyone knows the bike routes, and the bike signals.  Riding on The Wiggle, a bike lane marked with bright green paint, which zig-zags for a mile from near my house in NoPA to Market St., following a posse of seven random bikers, all experts who used the correct bike signals and wiggled in unison, felt so progressive, so badass, so post-climate change, that I couldn’t help but wonder if I had suddenly been teleported to The Netherlands. 

I also noticed that while my biking companions each were riding $1000+ bikes and sporting $100+ Chrome shoulder bags, only two of them were wearing bike helmets.  The East Coaster in me nearly commented:  “Excuse me, hipster biker dude.  Your bike is a lot nicer than mine and you are intense with your biker bag, and you kind of scare me when you ride so fast.  But you might want to spend $30 on a bike helmet so you don’t embarrass yourself.”

But I didn’t, best to keep things West Coast when on The Wiggle. 

Garlic shrimp burrito at Little Chihuahua

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You Have To Start Somewhere, So How About Right Now

8 Aug

(And other wisdom gained during a summer of transition)

StartingBloc NY ’12 commitments. Photo credit: Jeff Wenzinger

At the end of May, I quit my job with the intention of not living one more day failing to live up to my full potential in life.

It sounds so simple when you spell it out, as my friend Evan did for me one evening back in February on a Santa Monica rooftop overlooking the Pacific Ocean:  why would you do anything in life other than maximize your unique impact on the world?  Why would you ever stay in a job you don’t like and live in a city you don’t like?  Yet so many of us, including myself for several years, get stuck; we get stuck in jobs that don’t make us happy, we get used to mediocrity, and grow so accustomed to the routine of exercise/work/happy hour/party/Facebook/sleep (repeat), that we stop caring or trying, and we completely bury our passions, our creativity, our art, our unique voice.  Sometimes television and the news and alcohol and social media or even relationships help us forget, because they take the focus off our own selves, and allow us to forget who we are and what we are truly capable of achieving. 

 When you leave your job without 100% knowing what’s next, it’s really hard and really scary, and sometimes people laugh at you and sometimes you laugh at yourself.  “You left a job paying WHAT and job security for the next gazillion years to be a freelance writer?!  You’re nuts!  Wake up man!  It’s 2012!  Have you heard of a little thing called the recession?!  Writers can’t make money, journalism is dead. You’re moving to San Francisco— rent there is 450 times what it was two days ago— haven’t you seen the infographic?!  You’re competing for jobs with 2,000,000 other 29 year-olds with bachelors degrees from New England liberal arts colleges and no hard skills, you’re so screwed.  THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS LOSE MR. LEBOWSKI, THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS LOSE!”

The goals I set for myself when I left my job were to pursue my interest in writing, support social entrepreneurs, make others happy, and to empower people to live out their full potential in life.  To this end, I am succeeding so far, as this summer has given me time to travel, to explore, to learn, to grow, to write, to meet emerging social changemakers, to be inspired, to network, to find a tribe of people who believe in what I’m doing, and build the confidence necessary to move forward.

Tomorrow I finally fly out to San Francisco.  It’s been a long time coming, I’m only just getting started, the journey is only beginning, and I have so much work that lies ahead.  So I thought I’d offer some wisdom I’ve gained thus far, a few things I’ve learned this summer, for anyone else out there is going through a similar transition, or who is thinking about quitting their job or making a major change in their life. 

The beautiful thing about wisdom is that it comes from within, but it is sparked by the experiences you have with others; to that end, I am grateful for all of those who have touched my life this summer in such magical ways.  I’d like to particularly like to recognize the bold, inspiring, unreasonable, friends I’ve met this summer while spending time at StartingBloc BOS ’12, The Bold Academy, and StartingBloc NY ’12 as well as brief visits to The Unreasonable Institute and the ; communities of people whose passion for social change is so fierce you can’t help but become a better version of yourself.    

1.    You are already awesome.

 “Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”  -Steven Pressfield

I used to think that finding out who you are or what you’re going to do next came from talking to your friends and reading self-help books and seeing self-help counselors and doing lots of yoga and going on a pilgrimage to a temple somewhere in Asia.  While all of these may help, it’s easier to just look in the mirror and holler at yourself.  Who are you?  No, seriously, who are you?  What do you care about?  Where do you want to live?  Where do you not want to live?  What do you like to do?  What do you absolutely hate doing?  What are you good at?  What makes you happy?  What makes you upset?  What do you want to change in the world?

I had the amazing opportunity to spend a week in July at The Bold Academy in Boulder, Colorado, a real-life school for superheroes (if you don’t know, now you know!), created by Amber Rae and Nathaniel Koloc, which brought together 20 young people for a month-long journey in unlocking individual purpose and collective human potential, where I learned a simple but essential truth:  All of us are awesome and all of us have a unique, essential contribution to make in this world.  YOU.  ARE.  AWESOME.  Repeat it four times.  And then tell your friend so she knows she’s awesome too.  My brilliant friend Denise calls this self-love.  It will set you free. 

2.  Don’t front on the unstoppable power of someone with an idea and a passion.

“Look in your own heart.  Unless I’m crazy, right now a small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, that calling that is yours and yours alone.  You know it.  No one has to tell you.”  -Steven Pressfield

When people look within, find their interests and passions and unlock their human potential, it’s magical.  It’s unstoppable.  It’s contagious.  If you need any motivation, like I did, check out how StartingBloc Fellows are using social innovation and entrepreneurship to change the world, or check out the brilliant .

Unreasonable Institute Fellow ’s passion was so electric that his company, Liberation Chocolate, a social enterprise that employs former child soldiers in Liberia to revitalize cocoa plantations there, was re-launched in one afternoon in Boulder, Colorado.  At the Unreasonable Scrimmage, an all-day event hosted by The Unreasonable Institute and ReWork to engage Boulder community members in rapidly protyping social business models, eight people came together in the span of four hours to help Sheikh establish a U.S. distribution channel for his product, find a local chocolate producer, develop a new branding plan, and create a new website.  Why?  Because passion is power. 

3.  Gain wisdom from people younger than you are; they hustle harder

Prior to leaving my job I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder when it came to taking advice from young people in college or just out of college— sort of “I’m in my late 20s dude, you’re in college, you don’t know shit, talk to me after you’ve had a real job or two, after you’ve paid rent and had to pay off loans for a few years”—basically, I thought I was above listening to someone younger than me.  Not anymore.  Some of my most important mentors and the people I look up to most in life are 7-10 years younger than me.  Ted; he’s 22, he founded a nonprofit that teaches financial literacy to urban teenagers, he’s taught me infinitely more about smashing fear and setting audacious goals and being hungry and tenacious than any 30-80 year-old I’ve ever met.  Sam; she’s nine years younger than me, she has about 10 business projects going right now, knows everyone in the world of social entrepreneurship, and she inspires me to hustle harder.  Burcu; she worked at The Bold Academy this summer and made magic happen, she just graduated from college, and has already made a profound impact on the lives of so many people.  

Young people are tenacious, they are bold, they stop at nothing to get what they want, and most importantly, their deepest motivations come from connecting a personal interest with a social problem bigger than themselves.  As we get older we tend to immerse ourselves in the minutia of own lives; we should all spend more time listening and learning from young people, and following their lead for how we can make the world a better place.  

 4.  You have to start somewhere, so how about right now.

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.  Begin it now.” –Goethe

 I used to love imagining the future.  “One day, I’m going to live in San Francisco.”  “One day, I’m going to write whenever and whatever I want to write and not just write at work.”  I kept putting off my dreams for some perfect moment, some perfect time when the stars were going to align and bagels and lox were going to start flying down from the sky.

You know what?  The stars are aligned right now.  That perfect moment is now, the future is today.  You have to start somewhere.  “But I don’t really know what I’m doing.”  Nor do I, nor does anyone.  So start right now.  Start writing, start the blog, start the new venture, buy the plane ticket, begin now.  What are you waiting for? 

I had the honor of meeting Alex, aka , at The Bold Academy in July.  Alex is a Grammy-nominated jazz musician, and he’s launching a new career as a DJ/producer.  In the span of several weeks, he launched a new website and social media platforms, recorded an album and multiple other tracks, incorporated his business, found several business partners and is starting to book gigs.  In other words, he’s killing it.  Why?  Because he started. 

5.  Happiness and making money do not correlate  

It’s very nice to earn money.  There are millions of people in the world living in poverty who would like just some of it, while a very small number of people have way too much of it.  But, from my experience leading two “job/career change” discussion groups at StartingBloc this summer, making money and being fulfilled do not usually go hand-in-hand.  I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve had this summer with young professionals working well-paying, impressive jobs at notable corporate law firms, management consulting companies, government agencies, investment banks, nonprofits and smaller companies, who are miserable at work and in life because they are not being challenged and because their heart and their passions and theories of social change are not connected to what they do every morning at 10am.  

A paycheck is important.  It’s cool when someone sees your resume or your business card and is impressed.  But happiness comes not at happy hour when you’re bullshitting with someone and pretending to be happy while you are really miserable, but only when you are actually impressed with yourself; that is, when you are doing what you love.  I’ve gotten more personal joy in the last two months from sitting down and typing a few words that came from my heart, taking a risk by putting my words out there into the world (which I had rarely ever previously done), and then hearing from a reader that the words were inspiring and made him want to do something different with his life, then I did from countless months of direct deposits in my bank account.  Obviously, we all still need to make a living, we still need a job, but it’s not about the money; it’s about finding a job that works for you, your unique skills and passions, and the impact you want to make on the world. 

6.  You can’t do it alone, you need a tribe

Putting yourself out there is not easy.  Anyone who tells you that it’s easy to make a major life transition or quit your job or start your own business, is full of shit.  You simply cannot do it alone.   You need to find your tribe; a group of people who believe in what you are doing, who will do everything in their power to help you succeed, and will bring you back up when you fall down or start to doubt yourself.  Communities like those at StartingBloc and The Bold Academy; communities of love, communities of support, communities of affirmation, communities of “I got your back,” of “I feel you,” of “I can help,” of “you need to hustle harder” of “let’s hold each other accountable.”

When you find your tribe, victory is a constant because when one person in the tribe accomplishes something, whether it’s launching a new website or winning a fellowship or getting press recognition or raising money or writing a blog post or recording a new song, the rest of the members in the tribe also win. 

 7.  Be grateful

 We only get to where we are because of those who carry us.  Thank you to my tribe and my friends who continue to carry me through this challenging transition.  You have helped me become a better version of myself.  I love you and am forever grateful.  Time to hustle, ready, set, go. 

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Thank You, Alex

15 Jul

On Friday afternoon, I found out that Alex Okrent, a classmate from Wesleyan, had collapsed while at work in Chicago, and later passed away.  He was 29 years old, healthy, living with purpose, trying to make the world a better place.

In 2008, I was living abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, spending too much time on my laptop following Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and determined to get involved, I emailed my resume to everyone I knew that was working on the campaign.  Even though we were not close friends in college, Alex, who treated everyone like a close friend, responded immediately, and gave my resume to the right people—a few weeks later, I flew to Indiana to work as a field organizer in “Region 7.”  That experience, which Alex facilitated, shaped the next years of my life.

We spend so much time thinking about the most trivial of matters; the emails and the errands and our busy calendars, that we rarely stop to remember how precious life really is.  In conversations about Alex with friends from college, and in seeing the outpouring of love and support on Facebook, I realized that, despite all the challenges and worries and problems we deal with everyday, all of us have so much to be grateful for.  Our families, our friends, the love in our lives.

To think that a healthy, passionate, 29 year-old can pass away so suddenly is deeply tragic and saddening, and it reminds us all to live each day to the fullest.  Don’t wait to ask a friend from college if he can hook you up with a job (even if you have no relevant experience).  Don’t wait another moment to give your life purpose or get involved in something you believe in.  Do the things you want to do now, not later.  For today is what we have. 

Thank you, Alex, for touching my life.  All the love in the world to your family and friends.  We miss you.

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To Spain With Love

6 Jul

AND, WE’RE BACK!  My apologies for not posting in so long.  The entire What’s Up Smiley office (myself, Moleskine, dancing shoes) took a siesta from social media and spent most of June traveling around Catalonia and Andalucía, Spain, laying on the beach, drinking vino tinto, and watching the Euro Cup.  Several highlights from the trip included: 

Cap de Creus Natural Park, Catalonia. Photo by Kevin Haas.

-Driving along the Costa Brava, the rugged coast of northeast Spain, parking along the side of the road, and walking down a cliff to a desolate cove near Tossa del Mar to jump naked into cool, crystal clear green water, followed by a picnic lunch on the rocks of Penedès vino tinto, pan, tomate, queso manchego, olives, and jamón serrano so delicious my Jewish self wondered why the hell I had been avoiding ham all these years.  Turned out the cove was not so desolate, and was a featured stop on a local boat cruise, so at least fifteen people were fortunate to see three (handsome) young men enjoying themselves—that a woman snapped a photo of my pale white buttocks was reaffirming. 

 -Waking up with the sunrise after falling asleep with the stars, camping in the woods near Cap de Creus Natural Park, and reading The Hunger Games as daylight broke in our makeshift tent (which consisted of a transparent plastic paint tarp tied by rope to two trees for shelter—Katniss would have been proud), followed by a morning swim in the soothing Mediterranean Sea and breakfast on the beach (crackers, queso manchego, tangerines).

-Enjoying an evening sunset throwing a frisbee with my friend Kevin in the company of Gaudí’s tiled love seats in Parc Güell in Barcelona, only to run into a kid I grew up with that I hadn’t seen since high school—he was in town for the Sonar Music Festival and kindly put us on the guest list for his DJ set the following day.  The next night, it was two in the morning and I had been dancing on the beach for about five hours to Soul Clap, and received an invitation to attend a music festival in Budapest later this summer (no, I don’t play music at all, but my new Hungarian friends insisted I did or should and told me I had to come to Budapest in August, all expenses paid). 

-Standing in awe while drinking “cerveza birra amigo” in a plaza in Barceloneta as a baby (seriously) not more than one year-old, who five minutes after breastfeeding from his mother, proceeded to throw fire crackers several feet away from me to celebrate Festival de Sant Joan, Barcelona’s summer solstice celebration.   There were at least a half dozen moments that night when I nearly hit the deck scared shitless, having to remind myself that the constant explosions were not bombs or gunshots and I was not in a war zone or season four of The Wire, but children (and their mothers and grandmothers) were lighting off the loudest fireworks I have ever heard to celebrate the longest day of the year.  With all due respect to the Fourth of July, Sant Joan puts Independence Day to shame—with constant (literally constant) lights exploding on every block and in every plaza in the city from dusk to dawn. 

-Falling asleep under the cool afternoon shade of a palm tree in the pristinely beautiful gardens of La Alhambra in Granada, dreaming of the geometry of ancient civilization, water dripping slowly from the fountain of life, turquoise mosaics, stars and crescents, artists carving stories into arches, and endless fields of Andalusian orange trees. 

La Alhambra, Granada. Photo by Smiley.

While daydreaming in Granada, I imagined about living in a world that once was, and how we would live our lives today if today were like back then, so intricate and so precise and so enchantingly beautiful.  What would we design?  What would we build?  How would we live?

Perhaps time would move more slowly, perhaps we would move more slowly, perhaps we would pay more attention to detail, to ourselves.  Often on my trip, whether at La Alhambra or La Sagrada Familia, I noticed American (and Chinese) tour groups being shuffled, hastily, from photo op to photo op.  I constantly wondered why they were moving so fast.   Where were they going next? There is no “next” after La Alhambra, that’s it.  It’s the encore.  It’s perfection. 

These people were not even taking composed or thoughtful pictures; they were being shuttled from guide book highlight to guide book highlight so quickly that I wouldn’t be surprised if most of their photos were blurry, and had the tour guide or other random tourists in the foreground.  “Honey, this is La Sagrada Familia.  Antoni Gaudí started working on it 1883 and they are still working on finishing it and will be for at least another fifteen years—and we were there for about twenty-five minutes, and here is a photo of some overweight dude named Jack (or was his name Barry?) wearing a hideous ‘NASCAR’ T-shirt, completely blocking Gaudí’s sun-kissed stained glass windows.” 

I think if he were around today, Gaudí, or the 14th century builders of La Alhambra, might tell us to slow down and stop moving so quickly.  Stop looking at your phone.  Turn off your phone.  Be quiet.  Be still.  Breathe.  Listen.  Listen to the arched walls of this place, listen to the space and the light and the math and the design and the wisdom and the greatness and the blue blending with the orange connecting with the green intersecting with the star with the water with the trees.  Listen to yourself. 

Travel quenches a thirst for life that nothing else can provide.  It allows you to experience ancient civilizations and beautiful landscapes for the first time, as if you were the only person on the earth, as if the entire universe existed just for your pleasure.  Hopefully I can create travel’s powerful sensations of slowing down, being present, living in the moment, listening to my surroundings, and listening to myself, in the course of my day-to-day life back in the brutally-fast-moving Estados Unidos.  Or maybe I’ll just move to Granada, eat free tapas, and daydream under the palm trees until the polar ice caps melt or the World Cup begins.  

Mosaic in La Alhambra. Photo by Smiley

 

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Embracing Fear

6 Jun

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”  -Yoda

Uncertainties are ok, they are healthy in a way, I get that shit all the time.  I stopped trying to get rid of them, cause I always have them, it’s part of my DNA.” -Smiley

Ted Gonder inspires StartingBloc BOS ’12.

The topic of fear has come up a lot recently, talking to my friends and talking to myself in my Moleskine.  Fear can be especially brutal when you’re going through a major life transition, and has been a constant presence through the process of leaving my job and beginning anew as an unemployed yet optimistic I-can-fucking-make-it-as-a-writer, don’t-fucking-tell-me-I-can’t.  I had the fortunate opportunity to hear , a 22 year-old graduate of the University of Chicago, speak last week on the topic of “Smashing Fear” at the StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation, and in the course of 90 inspired minutes we watched (motherfucker can run backwards!) sticking his head into a swarming bee hive to get the larvae, calmly taking endless jabs to the head only to use his impregnable defense to knock-out his opponent with one perfectly-timed, perfectly-placed punch, and then we stood up with 100 other people and bit into a whole lime to suck all the juice out (don’t eat the peel!). 

Gonder, who received his college diploma last weekend, was recognized this spring by President Obama as a Champion of Change in the White House Campus Challenge, for being the co-founder and director of Moneythink, a Chicago-based nonprofit that empowers urban youth through financial life-skills and entrepreneurship mentoring.  This past week Moneythink became the recipient of the $25,000 Chase Community Giving Award and was featured in Forbes.  Gonder lives by the simple, yet powerful mantra:  “If I’m not at least a little scared to do something, it’s probably not worth my time.” 

Rather than a sign of encouragement or motivation, fear all too often becomes a red light that makes us put the breaks on the very ideas, dreams, goals, and journeys that we know we need to take.  Why?  Because the most epic life decisions naturally involve risk and the potential for success or failure—if they didn’t involve risk, you wouldn’t be thinking about them.  However, our fears are rather lame and paltry when we actually say them out loud or spell them out on paper.  Exhibit A:

My friend :  Smiley, what’s your biggest fear right now?

Smiley:  That I’ll suck as writer and never get published or make a living and have to go back to an office job that doesn’t 100% fire me up in the morning.

Shira (looking disappointed): a) You don’t suck as a writer.  b) Even if you have trouble making money from writing, you’ll be doing what you love and have gone for it, and worse-case scenario, worse-case scenario, you go back to an office job that would be pretty much what you were doing before, so… that’s really not that bad is it?

Smiley:  No, I guess it’s not that bad. 

Our fears are not nearly dramatic as we conjure them up to be in our heads.

“If all my friends give me money on Kickstarter for this documentary film and it doesn’t end up getting into Sundance, everyone’s going to think I’m a loser.”  False.  YOU MADE A FUCKING MOVIE, YOU’RE A ROCKSTAR!  How many people in this world have actually written or directed or starred in a film?  Like 0.00001% of the world’s population—you’re basically famous. 

“My parents will be worried or upset if I leave my paycheck to travel the world or be a Peace Corps volunteer or start a nonprofit with my best friend.”  Your parents love you dearly, but they care most about your well-being; following this urge will shape the course of your life and in the end, actually earn your parents’ respect. 

“If I take a gap year to write a book before graduate school, employers won’t hire me because of the gap on my resume.”  Any employer worth working for should value personal growth and exploration and should judge you based on what you did in your time off, not by whether you took it. 

When we spell them out, our fears are actually quite manageable and you don’t need Mike Tyson’s psycho-superhuman abilities to conquer them.  As Marianne Williamson said,  “Our biggest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our biggest fear is being powerful beyond measure.”  Despite this fact, anyone going through a major life decision knows that uncertainty and doubt creep in.  Every run I’ve gone on in the past four months, every yoga class, every time I’ve laid down to sleep, there is some amount of doubt or uncertainty or “what the hell am I doing?” that finds it’s way into my brain.  For months, my approach was to escape this sensation as fast as possible—go away fear, get away, get away get away, leave me alone, alone I said, shoo, fly!  You know what?  Didn’t work—doubt came back the next day.  Then I had a revelation; uncertainty and doubt are part of my DNA, they make up part of who I am.  I have a loving Jewish mother (who I love dearly)—there is no way, no fucking way, whether I want to or not, that I’m living a life without questions or uncertainty or doubt or guilt or worrying should I be doing something else instead or is this a good idea or should I have taken an umbrella?

So instead of running from fear, I embrace it and use it as fuel.  I say to the doubt, directly, “Ok doubt, I see you, I see you doubt, and I raise you ten; I’m gonna run a little faster, gonna work this downward dog a little harder, gonna write some more today, gonna call three friends who live far away today, gonna hug five new people today.”  As my friend Shira writes, “If we stop trying to eliminate fear, and instead use it reveal what it is that we love and value, it can become an incredible source of energy and direction.”  Instead of a dreaded menace to escape from, fear has become fun for me, and embracing it has unlocked a renewable energy source I’m just beginning to discover.  

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Just For Life (Why I Quit My Job)

27 May

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” -Annie Dillard

Friday was my last day working for the federal government.  I had been working in government a little more than two years, so several colleagues took to calling me “short-timer” before I left.  Two years is far less than the long federal careers most people usually have, who are attracted to public service, long-term job security and benefits.  However, bureaucracy is not kind to anyone, let alone a twenty-something with a creative spirit that likes to ask tough questions.

It is never easy to quit your job; it is especially difficult when you truly believe in the mission of the organization you’re working for, and even harder when you don’t have another job or grad school lined up.   I told someone last week that I was leaving and moving to San Francisco, and she replied, “Oh, wonderful, where are you going to be working?”  “I don’t have a job yet,” I replied.  “Oh, great, where are you going to graduate school?”  “I’m not going to school,” I said.  “So you’re just going…for life???” she said, dumbfounded.  She looked at me like I was from another planet.

Just for life.  As if life was not good enough.  Is there a better reason to quit your job than the fact that you are not happy, that you are not fulfilled, that you are not living out your full potential in life? I want to do something different with my life.  What that is—I’m not exactly sure—but I want it anyway.  I know it will involve me pursuing my personal interests (writing, supporting social entrepreneurs who are creating positive change) and being the best version of me; a passionate, creative me that wants to make others happy and empower people to live out their full potential in life.   

In his book Walking on Water, author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen refers to the concept of fittingness, that is, how well your actions match your unique gifts, match who you are.  He says we should all be asking ourselves the question:  “What’s the biggest and most important problem I can solve with my gifts and skills?”  ReWork, an innovative company that tries to connect exceptional professionals with positions in organizations with a social or environmental mission, emphasizes the importance of finding where you as an individual (your skills, your interests, your passions) fit best with an organization.  While I deeply respect the work my organization does, and am grateful for my tremendously kind and passionate colleagues, who will remain mentors and close friends, I personally was no longer inspired by the day-to-day work I did there, and in the end, that’s all that matters.

You can work at the most impact-driven social enterprise, an innovative non-profit or company that is changing the world, the place where your friends or your parents or your career counselor think you should work, but in the end, it’s all about whether the particular job itself within that organization is a good fit for you.  You’re the one that has to be happy.  I remain hopeful that I’ll find a job where I feel passion, happiness, and excitement about what I’m going to do tomorrow morning at 10:15am.  Maybe not every single day, but at least the majority of the time.  As I enter the next phase of my life, there will undoubtedly be bumps in the road and moments of fear, frustration, and failure, but the challenge excites me, and waking up knowing that I’m spending my days listening to my heart will keep me going.  

Smiley’s Moleskine

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