When All In Goes Wrong

When I first started falling in love with the world of coffee I fell head over heels. The excitement and magnetism I felt towards this new journey was strong — I spent nearly every waking moment engaging with this new love in some way shape or form.

In many ways it was amazing. I got to spend my days doing work I was deeply engaged in and the side-effects of my hard work and dedication were wild.

“Do you want to come to Colombia and teach coffee producers about coffee culture in the states?”

“Do you want to visit Milan to make espresso at the biggest coffee machine show on earth?”

“You planning on going to World Coffee Expo in Vienna?”
“No.”
“Well your plans just changed, I’m paying for your trip.”

It blows my mind to think of how fortunate I was, but there was a cost.

When I started itching for the next level of my journey I pulled my head out of the sand to realize that I didn’t really know who I was or what was fueling me at my core anymore.

I went so deep in one dimension that most aspects of my life were unrecognizable to my former self.

My health, my close relationships and marriage, my connection with things that had always been safe places (skateboarding, music, drawing), every aspect of my life outside of coffee suffered.

I’m still reeling from the aftershocks of this one-dimensional mindset nearly 10 years later.

Every day is a step forward in the process of rediscovering myself and reclaiming my happiness.

Sacrifice

While my effort and attention were rewarded with some amazing, irreplaceable experiences, and a strong foundation of skill and knowledge in a certain niche, looking back I realize I would have had the potential to go much farther and had more fun along the way if I would have split my energy 80/20 or even 70/30 instead of 100/0.

Some level of sacrifice is necessary to make big changes in our lives. The question is how much do we sacrifice, what do we sacrifice, and for how long? We will trade our time. We will trade some amount of energy. But do we need to trade our sense of self?

I’ve always had the problem of fully abandoning the past when looking to move towards a new future. Every time I start a new project I feel as if I have to reinvent myself. Start from scratch. I hate it. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to do that anymore.

So now I’m playing catch up.

Something may have knocked you off your path. Taken you away from yourself. We’ve all experienced it. It’s easy to blame the obvious causes: work, school, some sort of societal pressure, a task we had to do to survive, something we hate.

But it could just as easily be something we love that’s pulling us away from ourselves.