What would you tell your 18 year old self?

“Success doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a process. Don't pick something up and throw it away the next day. Just know It's gonna come with hard work and it will pay off in the long run. I’m currently still on that journey right now, but I’m confident that there will be something that will pay off in the end. I feel like there's always light at the end of the tunnel. At 18 and fresh out of high school, I was still in party mode. But at the end of that summer, I made the decision to go to university at l'Université de St. Boniface and it was a culture shock. You’re out here trying to relate. But at some point, you just feel like you're hitting a wall. I'm pretty optimistic and try to make the best of a situation. But I ended up just dropping out after a semester. I was grabbing a drink one night and I straight up just messaged my professor and said, ‘I can't do this anymore, I'm just going to do something else with my life.’ I just didn't know what that something was. At that point, I knew I just wanted to work for a little bit. I watched a lot of sports and after I finished football in high school, I wanted to be a coach. After that I thought, "I’d rather just work behind the scenes." This is what got me into taking sport management in Toronto.  It was a three-year program, but I only finished one year. I came back for holidays and I had to really think about if I really wanted to continue. It’s one of those, as-much-as you-want-to-do- something-you-have-to-outweigh-the-pros-and-the-cons moments. But at the end of the day, if the cons outweigh the pros, you're not going to go. And that's what I ended up doing.

When I came back to Winnipeg, I didn't really have much to do. After a few months, it was like being a dark place. It was just like, come home from work, then you've got nothing to do with your time. Just party with your friends. I still do that, just in moderation as we all should do. But you know, if it's something where you do it every day, you’re gonna wake up and feel disgusting. Yeah, so that’s where my excuses came into play. I just needed something to get my mind off of why I came back here. In the back of my mind, I always thought about what could have been, to this day I still do, but success doesn't happen overnight, it's a process. When you want something, you're gonna go and get it. And you're gonna jump all the obstacles & pull out all the stops to make sure you get there.

I would tell my 18 year old self to just relax and not to stress out too much. And don't think that just because one little thing goes wrong that it’s all over. I realized in hindsight, well, maybe I shouldn’t have acted as such. And that could be said with anything in life, not just pursuing your goals. You know, like your relationship with your friends and family. Don’t’ let one thing cloud that relationship, put quality in that relationship. You’re gonna have your ups and downs. It’s gonna get dark at times for you, but just know that it does get better in the end. You’ve gotta have a good support system behind you, to at least get you over that hump. I’m lucky I have that. When you go into something, you gotta know what you gotta do to get it done. That's what it comes down to. It’s funny how I came across teaching myself to relax. There’s this one day where I smoked myself out, to the point of anxiety. I had to tell myself to chill the fuck out. So I took that lesson and just taught myself at times when I feel anxious, or some sort of distress that I can just chill, just relax. Sometimes it takes going over the top, going off the deep end to have that realization. You have people starting work right away at 18 years old and people that are starting their first year of a five year program. Fast forward to today, I know people that already graduated,  people already doing what they want to do with themselves which is awesome, however I want to be sure I know what I'm doing before I fully commit. It’s always nice to try anything. I like to expand. I like to experiment and explore. In Toronto I learned that there is so much to see and do in life. You just have to want to go out and do it. That was one reason why I chose to move in the first place. When I came back to Winnipeg, I realized that I want to explore the city for what it actually is. Even comparing the North to the South, the sights are there however it's up to you to go explore it.

There was a podcast I listened to featuring Eddie Huang and he straight up said he went to law school just because he wanted to. He wanted the prefix at the beginning of his name. That was the reason he got into it, it wasn't because he was interested in law. He just didn’t want people to look at him in a different way. And that's one thing that I want to do, is break that mold of how you're perceived in the environment you put yourself in. I want to be doing my own thing, just because it’s what I like doing. But it's like when somebody asks me why I like doing something, they expect some extravagant answer, but it's something as simple as, if I want to do it, why do I need more of an answer than that? At the end of the day if you're happy with who you are, don't let someone’s opinion take that away from you. Another take away I had just from life in general, was to stop caring about what other people think. I look up to Action Bronson, because he brings out authenticity. I heard this from a podcast that he was on. He said, ‘Don't let somebody tell you what you shouldn't be doing on your journey to becoming whatever you want to be.’”