Tuesday Thoughts: Day Two of Entrepreneurship

I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional household and keeping a diary always kept me sane, but the cool part is looking back on my thoughts a year later, and man was that wild. I mean have you ever looked into the thoughts of a thirteen year old? I guess in the same way this blog might as well be my public diary, with it’s many humiliating thoughts. I hardly expect anyone would read the mad thoughts of a woman who just quit her six figure salary, in a currently less than fabulous economy to make and sell handbags, many of which are still mere ideas in her sketchbook. So no, I’m not scared that anyone would read these writings because you’d have to be mad to even care to read such silly dilly dally thoughts, but hey I’ve heard of stranger things. Hell I’ve live through stranger things. Then again what millennial hasn’t? I guess I’ll call this Tuesday Thoughts, and maybe just maybe, if the ADHD does get the best of me, I might remember to come back here every Tuesday and chronicle the possibly disastrous journey of entrepreneurship and delusion! I refuse to  speak such negativity upon myself this early on, but damn, sometimes those intrusive thoughts be intruding.

If I’m being real, I haven’t written in a very long time, and I used to love it! I always felt like I could be better understood when ink met the paper, because in real time, the comebacks aren’t as quick as my wit but I digress. Lately I’ve kept my door open with the universe. It speaks, and I listen. I have questions, it sends me answers, that sort of thing, but as if I needed to hear it the day before I quit my job just this past Friday. I know! But we can come back and celebrate in a minute or I might forget what point I was making. As if knowing that I needed to hear it, in meditation, it whispered in my ear, “you don’t dream big anymore.” If I’d snapped out of that mediation faster than I did, I might be a pea because honey did that hit me harder than that bucket challenge everyone and their mother was doing back in the day. And then I sat there, and thought about it a bit. That’s the thing, I used to dream big, but then I stopped dreaming, and life kept happening, I kept moving, and yet somehow I feel like I’m living in the reality of my teenage self’s dream. I guess I must’ve released and detached so hard, my dreams found their way to me over the last few years. I can’t complain, I love my life! I have a loving husband, a gorgeous home with the most magnificent tree in the back yard, some pretty incredible friends, and maybe along the way I went and saw some pretty incredible places and somehow managed to live this incredible life before the age of thirty. In that way your thirties are nice. You kind of loose the feeling of anxiety that you had in your twenties to feel like you were always behind no matter what you did, and you enter this whole new world one in which you learn that life is best savored and some motivational speaker yelling at you to get up is best saved as an alarm for those days when you don’t feel like going to the gym, rather than a whole personality lifestyle. That’s the beauty of life though, you don’t know what you don’t know when you don’t know it. Maybe that’s the thing, I’m at such place of privilege and softness in life I can choose to move with ease and grace into whatever I desire. Whatever serves my soul’s evolution most. Maybe this whole time I was learning to step into my power, to find my voice, to learn to gain everything that had been robbed of me in order for me to show up and show out when I did. And if I so chose to step into my own light knowing I could have it all because if I desire it somewhere I a version of me already has it.

In trusting the universe I also have to trust that when it said that I don’t dream big anymore, it was giving me permission to desire despite having it all, for it must know my soul’s desire to leave this place in better shape, to touch lives and improve upon them, and to restore other’s spirits so that they may know the joy that comes with the journey. In that same way that it has let me know I need to allow myself to dream bigger, or even dream at all, once more, it’s often brought to my attention my need to play more. And if the joker did indeed ask, “why so serious?” He must’ve been asking a Capricorn.

The truth is I don’t know what will be of this brand in a month, a year, or five from now, but if this is life inviting me to play, then baby let’s dance like it’s the first rain in the arid desert in mid July. And since odds are nobody is reading this, I can be serious with myself and maybe with each word from the keyboard to the screen I can allow myself to see all that my heart desires, and let life carry my wish through the wind of the internet gods and return to me a reality. A reality in which maybe I do make it. That maybe with each bag, I’m able to stitch confidence into someone who buys it so that it may raise their spirits and allow them to see themselves for the beauty within and radiate outwards. A reality in which maybe one day I get to showcase at Paris Fashion Week. And from time to time at my atelier in Paris my employees will hear me say to newspapers, and magazines, ” you know back when I started out of my garage, that was the atelier. Funny enough it was called Maison Alvarado, not because we were the maison we are now but it was a cute play on words because the brand actually started out of my maison (house), but really it was the first time I allowed myself to dream for dreaming sakes. Not in hopes of one day escaping current life but rather truly dreaming. Thing is I always knew I’d make it, because life had a way of loving me, protecting me, and giving me anything and everything I desired,” and then I’ll look adoringly into the distant in a very poetic way. Hahaha. In all honesty and vanity aside, can you imagine me making this work in a way where I don’t have to ever go work for anyone ever again, or even more so, a reality in which I get to treat my employees to good pay, plenty of rest, and still make money to establish my own animal conservation efforts, restore forests, and clean water? Man what a life that would be! A dream to have the blessing and privilege of being able to take care of those around you and doing it while being this sexy, funny, and from first class. Amen!

I like beginnings like this, when you’ve got nothing to lose. When you feel like you’re flying because you’ve got no net it feels crazy hard at times, but when you do make it to the other side you have this profound appreciation for the growth and the lessons that shaped you, and that’s where I am right now I know it! Back in my twenties I fell to homeless a couple of times since I also didn’t have family I could rely on, and those months when I was living out of my car, saving every penny, working out at the gym just so I’d have a place to shower were some of the happiest days of my life because it felt like I was at the bottom but I could also see the light, and oddly enough it felt a lot like flying. I was free from responsibilities, and if I really thought about it I could go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone, and that’s where I am right now. At the begging of play, at the beginning  of this race, at the edge of the mountain top ready to base jump, and once I take the leap I can scream in panic until the adrenaline stops taking over but if I take a moment I just might take it all in. I might just see the beauty in possibility and starting over again, in the beauty of chasing dreams far bigger than your wildest fears, and maybe just maybe achieving it all and having a grand old time along the way.

Love,

Alvarado