Say Hello to...the Years That Ask Questions
Life doesn’t resemble the Pinterest boards I made when I was younger...
Back in pre-pandemic 2019, I was flown out to San Francisco to speak at Pinterest. At the time, they hosted a conference for their employees and invited users from around the country to share how they used their platform.
My team and I utilized the site to plan our popup dinners - picking a theme, selecting floral installations, choosing the menu - and my session was all about using digital tools to create offline experiences.
I can still remember the moment my Uber pulled up to their headquarters on Brannan Street. It all felt so meaningful to me! The entire experience was external validation of my life choices up to that point: I wasn’t wasting time, I was making an impact, and that impact was noticeable beyond the confines of Des Moines.
I haven’t felt that way in long time, though. I used to consider myself to be a deeply creative person, but I’m not sure if that’s true anymore. Excluding this newsletter, I’m not involved in any creative endeavors whatsoever and my friend group no longer consists of chefs, stylists, and photographers.
If you were to compare my Pinterest boards back then - urban rooftops, long tables, cities where everyone wore huaraches with oversized linen shirts - to my life right now, I don’t think you’d see any similarities.
Sure, those boards were all aspirational, but they were also rooted in hopes for the future…
Last month I was texting with photographer extraordinaire, Liz Brown, about how sweet life was between 2014 - 2019. We were enmeshed in the same community (and frequented the same coffee shop!) so we share similar memories from that time period.
I once read that we need to be able to see a narrative within our daily lives, and I was able to do that then. I knew the story that I was telling with my life. Because of my site, Say Hello to the City, and the dinners I orchestrated, the day-to-day possessed a significant sense of purpose.
Living through those years of trying to find my creative niche felt like a struggle, but in retrospect the struggle was what made that era so deeply rewarding. I guess that quote we’ve all seen on Pinterest is true: it really is about the journey versus the destination.
I’m thankful now for consistent income, a comfortable apartment, a car that’s paid off, an espresso machine with a built-in milk steamer - but life doesn’t look like I thought it would.
And some of my expectations for the future weren’t that unrealistic! While being able to afford a loft in Brooklyn wasn’t necessarily rational, I think working in a creative industry was and it’s hard to look back on that day at Pinterest and realize life didn’t lead where I expected it to.
I thought that was the beginning of a new season, but now I wonder if it was actually the climax of an old one.
There’s another quote I see on Pinterest quite a bit, “There are years that ask questions and there are years that answer.” For so long I was in the latter, but now I’m in the former again. I’m asking all sorts of questions about the past, the present, and the future.
It sounds cliche, I know. This entire post is basically an ode to both nostalgia and uncertainty. I almost deleted it because I wondered if it would mean anything to anyone else? But I know if I feel this way, others have, too.
It reminds me of another quote I see bouncing around online, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”