This letter is very on-the-nose for where I’m standing right now.
The new year is still warming up, last year barely in the rearview, and I’m very much at the edge of something. Not a leap-off-a-cliff moment, but that charged pause where everything familiar is still behind you and everything ahead is undefined.
The kind of change that feels thrilling and unsettling, like your body knows before your brain does.
In the next month, I’ll be heading to my next film festival, I know I’ve already shared this, but it still feels wild to type. At the same time, Take What You Need is entering a new chapter of its own. Starting this week, the installation is officially launching a residency with Starbucks. Yes, that Starbucks.
If you’re in the Kansas City metro area, you can experience the installation in real life beginning this week at the Starbucks on 1930 Diamond Parkway in North Kansas City. It’ll live there for now, then rotate through other Starbucks locations across the region over the next couple of months. I’ll still be popping up at other KC events and venues, but this will be home base for a bit.
Which feels both grounding and a little surreal in the best way.
I’m so grateful to Celeste, the district manager, and her team for being open, curious, and willing to trust this work enough to give it real space to live.
Sometimes the edge of change looks like a big unknown. Sometimes it looks like your project living inside a coffee shop while people go about their day. Both count.
That’s the energy behind this letter.
Standing at the edge. Feeling the nerves. Taking the step anyway.
Dear You,
Change can feel like standing at a cliff’s edge.
Behind you is everything familiar, even if it no longer fits the person you are becoming. Ahead of you is the unknown, wide and open and impossible to fully map.
Taking the step can feel terrifying. Standing still can feel just as unbearable.
It’s normal to hesitate here. To look back. To look back again. To look back one more time. To wonder if it would be easier to stay with what you know, even if it has grown tight or heavy. The edge of change often arrives before confidence does.
But courage is not the absence of fear.
Courage is choosing to move while fear still lives in your chest. It is letting your hands shake and taking the step anyway. You don’t need to leap. You don’t need a perfect plan. You only need one small step forward.
The unknown is not your enemy.
It is simply unfamiliar. It is the place where your next chapter waits, where your next self is quietly taking shape. The ground may not reveal itself all at once, but trust that it will meet you as you move. It always has before.
If you’re here, it means something in you is ready, even if another part is afraid. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Ask yourself:
What is one small step I can take without demanding certainty?
Who or what can support me as I move forward?
You are not alone at the edge. Many have stood exactly where you are now, uncertain, trembling, hopeful, afraid, and still found their way forward. You don’t have to rush.
You don’t have to know everything. You only have to keep going.
And I know you will.
Standing at the edge with you,
Kasim