Letter from the Founder

Limitless

Photo by Chase Stanley

Photo by Chase Stanley

 I’m in my happy place as I write this (on my laptop at a coffee shop on a sunny afternoon) and I’m doing exactly the thing I’ve been daydreaming about for years: writing an official correspondence to a gathering of like-minded peers.

I’m nervous about what to say and how it’s going to read. I worry about being edited and critiqued. I hear a nagging voice in my head, poking at me that I’m going to blab too long and no one’s going to read it. Or worse yet, five people will read it and make fun of me in the comments. I hear my parents’ voices in my head asking what gives me the right to speak from a podium.

In short, I’m fairly certain I’m gonna fuck this up.

And if it weren’t for this Neil Gaiman commencement speech from 2012, I might not have found the words to keep going past that second sentence. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step but, boy, that first step is a doozy.

What that thousand miles cliche leaves out is that taking that first step can feel like you’re learning how to walk and the path is rarely a straight line. It curves and bends, the weather and terrain changes dramatically and many of us won’t even make it past that first hill.

But then you build momentum and before you know it, your strides become second nature, your hands begin swinging and eventually you even get kind of cocky and begin to dance. After you dance on your own for a while, you begin craving more dance partners. Which brings us here.

Every one of us has been on a different journey till now and it has brought us to this intersection of ideas and desires. Justified Hype is not meant to replace that journey. It is the tavern at which our journeymen (journeypersons?) kick their boots up and share their adventures over a pint. We encourage our patrons to get loud, smash their mugs to the floor and perhaps discover a new pattern in the shards that come of it, inspiring a new quest.  

There is no wrong path. The possibilities are limitless.

Our theme for April is Limitless. I shared my nervousness with you because I decided a long time ago that hiding makes everything harder. It limits the roads we can take because we end up spending all our time maintaining our personal brand. Justified Hype is a place for Creators to be uncomfortably honest. A place where we accept that our first few attempts might not be perfect and that we celebrate that. There is no place here for the limits of perfectionism. Take the first step and get excited about fucking up. You’ll be dancing in no time.