May 2014 will be the release date of my first E-book: On Starting Somewhere.
The book addresses the phase of entrepreneurship or a creative endeavor before success. This usually means in the midst of failure, or a few failures, that we build ourselves back from.
This first excerpt is from the introduction, which recounts some of my personal experiences leading to the concept of this book.
Once, in one of my first seasons as a correspondent for a New York based fashion website, I was outside of the Ecole de Medecin near Odéon in Paris, waiting for the Martin Margiela Mens’s Fashion Show to begin. Actually, waiting to even get inside to take a place where I would then wait some more for the show to begin. I was surrounded by fashion heavies and fashion up and comers and fashion wannabes . I don’t know where I fit in in all of that because in my mind I just didn’t belong there at all. As privileged as I felt to be in attendance, I felt terribly uncomfortable as part of the scene. I wished to be invisible. I wished so much to be invisible. Just to take my place and watch the beautiful show and write my article and store it away in my mind bank of experiences. But I was not invisible. (I am still not). So I stood there, out of place and awkward and unsmiling and tense and trying not to make eye contact with people or stare too long at people who were too obviously dressed with the hope of being stared at.
When through the crowd I see the Fed Ex delivery-man. He walks purposefully through the mob of people in between his truck and the door he’s heading towards and I thought to myself: “Why can’t I just be a Fed Ex delivery person?”
He has a sense of purpose, and at the same time can blend into any setting without self-awareness. His workday consists of a list of tasks just like the day before. An unadulterated comfort zone.
I truly believe sometimes that this would make life so much simpler. I am so tormented (it sounds dramatic, but it does feel terribly dramatic a lot of the time). If I could just have a simple job that was the same every day, where nothing will be asked of me tomorrow that I don’t already know how to do today. My God, what a life that would be.
Would I be bored? Would I wonder: “There must be something else?” Is ignorance bliss? And once tasted, does a life of building and problem solving become your curse? Futile questions. The Boss knows it, too. A Jersey boy looking for more: “There's something happening somewhere, baby I just know that there is.”
And it’s not as if, after gaining a certain amount of experience, the questions stop. With every new day comes a new set of unknowns. There is an evident propensity for tackling these daily impediments within the entrepreneurial class. Otherwise we would not get past day one. But this is also that pivotal moment of no return. We can always take the easy way. And so we ask ourselves: “What am I after?”
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