photo captured by TIMOTHY BUOL for COVETEUR

photo captured by TIMOTHY BUOL for COVETEUR

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

TRIFECTA

I spent the early years of my career working very very hard to bring make a lot of other people’s dreams come true. so much so that I stopped putting in the work to manifest my own. I did this because I believed that if I poured my all into somebody else’s dreams that they would return the favor and help me manifest my own. I think anybody can attest that that’s not how life works and for sure not in the fashion world. At the brink of 25, I sat back and reflected on this, and decided that I no longer wanted to be making other people’s dreams come true. It was time to invest in my own. I meditated on it, prayed on it, fasted on it, and still had no idea what was it really entailed. 

*I’m about to talk about MY God. If you not tryna hear it, skip this paragraph, but if you need a word!*

 As a church boy I’ve heard 1 Corinthians 2:9 preached to me in a number of different ways from a number of different pastors, it says, “What God has planned for people who love him is more than eyes have seen or ears have heard. It has never even entered our minds!” Despite that, I was certainly sure I had my life mapped out, so much so that on my 25th birthday when I was in the office till 11 pm, working on credits for my first shoot with GQ, I was sure that this was it. This had to be the manifestation of my dreams, this had to be what was in store for me. This was surely the highlight of my year. When we map our lives out we exercise the things we’ve already seen and consider, “Oh, I want to do that! That’s for me” and don’t even realize how small we’re thinking. When God has so much bigger in store for you–so much bigger that it’s unimaginable. 

Since leaving my job I’ve been doing a lot of things, but I have been working on what I like to call Trifecta Content. It’s that sweet spot that sits in the middle of the venn diagram between Style, Travel, and Culture. It’s the content that tells a story about a destination, its people, and how they express themselves through style. It’s content that connects us all through one of the most common tongues: fashion. Not every city is a fashion capital, but every city has style. In fashion, we watch the runways of Paris and Milan for trends, but we should never forget that these designers and trends are inspired by real people that exist all over the world, and this is my way of giving them their own runway. When I prayed, fasted, and meditated 2 years ago, I never imagined this would be the outcome.

I could have never imagined that me wanting to make my own dreams happen would mean me quitting my dream job with no plan of action. After leaving I spoke with a mentor about my decision and realized that I had subscribed to an idealized perfect life that I had mapped out, but that map was traced. The map was traced against a combination of other paths that I had seen and known to work. While a new path had already been carved out for me. I write all this to say, be careful what you pray for, cause the Lord just might pull up on you, and shake shit up. Enjoy the #TrifectaContent, God bless. 

 

 
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