kev

Almost everything that is meaningful, beautiful, life-affirming, empowering, transformational, true—it can’t be reached by shortcuts. But what we can do is make the longcuts walkable, put out footbridges and stairs, and a table where the ocean comes into view.

Seek friction.

In my past experiences publishing, I sought public success assuming it would lead to feelings of private satisfaction. It’s only now, observing this expectation clearly for the first time, that I can see how misguided this was.

In this experiment I took the agency and time to define success. It wasn't an open-ended search for approval. The goal was to express an idea, its full context, and for them to be seen and understood. That has happened, adding up to maybe the most enjoyable publishing experience of my writing life to date. Those 250 collectors satisfied my entire Maslow’s hierarchy of writerly needs with their support.

I am seeing a similar thing with ESPRIT—GenX comes to our stores and shares their stories of growing up with ESPRIT, and GenZ does the same from a nostalgia perspective. I want to connect with our fans through both of these sentiments.

The more wear stories, the richer the object.