A Good Dose Of Not Caring What People Think

A Good Dose Of Not Caring What People Think
Not a care in the world

It's been 12 years that I've been making a life with Rich.  Being cut from different cloths, we've stitched ours together to fashion some sort of technicolor quilt.  Like the unthinkable combinations of a Gen Z fashion statement, we have fused our two, independent and distinct styles together.  If you were to spend time with both of us you'd gauge that we are of much different designs.  But if you were tangled up in our marriage, you'd see that Rich's chunky platform sneaker is complimentary to my 'coastal grandma' bucket hat and oversized button down shirt ;).

Case in point is the disparity between my attention to how people will be affected by our actions, and Rich's hyper focus on doing good work with an indifference to how it will be received.  Thank God for my regular exposure to someone's inherent ability to 'Be Here Now', to work with integrity and to see the chips fall where they may.  Without that influence in my daily life, I would live in my singular personal paradigm, whittling myself away to try to mold this business to meet the varied requests and demands of our market...an impossibility.  Call me a people pleaser or a gemini or a Catholic school girl.  I am learning from Rich and from other great personal 'influencers' that the key is not to drive toward a myriad of ideas of what we can be, but rather to fashion something of our own volition and inspiration which plays off of our unique patterns.

As it turns out, the businesses which I am drawn to and the enterprises and personalities that excite me have people behind them who have been inspired by the world, and have gone on to lead a life of conviction, patterned by their own thoughts, ideas and creations.  The best flavors, most charm, and ultimately most goodness is found at the end of an individual's rainbow who is embracing all of their own colors.  We are lucky to have some exemplary chefs in Dayton who are unforgiving in their own interpretation of a meal, with menus that don't follow the regurgitated mold, and who introduce us to flavors we never knew we wanted on our plate.

There are plenty of people and businesses who are trying to find their day in the sun by reproducing someone else's successful idea.  There are also many successful and beautiful ideas whose souls are sold to grow bigger and eventually NOT better as the original intention is overcome by a Scroogish greed.  So as time goes on and I learn more about myself and the inherent fallibility that I'm just as susceptible to as anyone else, it becomes clearer that a beacon worth aiming for is a life built by doing good work which contributes something good to the world, woven with the fibers of our own being.  

And if we are giving of ourselves what we can in our own way, exploring what makes us tick, and looking to improve upon our process and in our case our product, hopefully we too will have made something valuable to someone else...something worth bringing into your life and onto your table.


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