Today, my art installation was featured in The Kansas City Star.
Last week, I found myself sitting across from Brian Ellison on KCUR. A few days before that, I was on KKFI Radio’s Artspeak. The day before, I stood in front of a FOX 4 camera, then sat down with Startland News, all within the span of about seven hours.
Now I don’t share any of this to gloat.
I share it because I want to give you an honest snapshot of this moment in my life. From the outside, it might look like everything is beautifully falling into place. What you couldn’t see is that just three weeks ago, I was seriously considering giving it all up.
The financial cushion from my previous career was gone. The savings I’d been living on had disappeared. Every month became another unpleasant, but necessary, exercise in asking myself the same question:
Can I make this work for thirty more days?
I started having conversations with myself that I’d spent a year trying to avoid.
Maybe it’s time to update my résumé
Maybe I gave this my best shot
Maybe passion isn’t enough
Maybe the responsible thing to do is walk away
That last one haunted me.
It lingered like a ghoul peering out from the corner of my closet. Never quite saying anything, just... watching. Waiting for me to have one particularly difficult day before whispering, "Maybe it's time."
Because walking away wouldn't have meant abandoning some carefree hobby.
It would've meant letting go of the work I believe I was put on this earth to create. I've stood beside Take What You Need and watched someone in a business suit stand beside someone in a worn-out hoodie. I've watched tourists from halfway around the world stand shoulder to shoulder with lifelong Kansas Citians. I've watched people who had nothing in common discover they were carrying the same invisible weight.
How do you walk away from something after witnessing that?
The answer is... slowly.
It’s not that you stop believing in the work. But you begin wondering whether the work can sustain the person creating it.
For the better part of a year, TWYN survived because of generosity. Donations. Kindness. People quietly slipping a few dollars into a box because the installation had given them something they couldn’t quite put into words. I’ll never stop being grateful for those moments.
But gratitude and sustainability aren’t the same thing.
Gratitude doesn’t pay for lumber. It doesn’t pay for envelopes. Or gas. Or groceries. Or my mortgage. Eventually, I found myself staring at another question:
What if believing in this isn’t enough?
I don’t think we give up all at once. I think we negotiate. We make tiny bargains with ourselves that somehow feel easier than admitting what we’re really considering.
Maybe I’ll give it one more event
Maybe if nothing changes by the fall...
Maybe this chapter has run its course.
One compromise quietly becomes another until, before you know it, you’ve started building an exit plan for a life you don’t actually want to leave. That’s what exhaustion does. It disguises itself as practicality and whispers things that sound so reasonable you almost mistake them for wisdom.
“Most people don’t get to do what they love forever.”
For a while, I listened to those whispers. And I believed them.
Then something unexpected happened. Not one grand, cinematic moment where the clouds parted and the orchestra swelled. Just... little by little.
First, an email.
Then a phone call.
Eventually, an interview. A conversation that reminded me why I’d started in the first place.
Next a request to bring Take What You Need to a private event for a facilitated experience.
And then another organization asked if they could purchase the letters themselves so they could create the experience within their own community. Another wondered if there was a version small enough to live in an office.
Someone else asked if there was a way to bring it into their home.
The opportunities themselves weren’t what changed me. It was what they represented.
Three weeks earlier, I was quietly preparing myself to let this dream go. Then, almost overnight, the world began asking for more of it. I was reminded of something I think we all forget when we’re standing in the middle of a difficult season:
The moment we feel most certain that nothing is changing is often the moment just before everything begins to.
Which brings me to this month’s letter: To the one who wants to give up.
TWYN Post #001 | August 2026
The letter in full is available exclusively to paid subscribers below, who will also receive a physical copy in the mail later this month via TWYN Post. If you’d rather experience the letter for the first time when it arrives in your mailbox, consider this your official spoiler warning and stop scrolling here. Otherwise, read on.
And if you’re a free subscriber, consider upgrading to paid. You’ll unlock the letter below, get access to the entire TWYN archive, and later this month, I’ll send a physical copy straight to your mailbox.
Dear You,
You’re beaten, battered, and bruised…
Perhaps not literally, but maybe mentally, emotionally, and/or spiritually. Life has turned you upside down, sideways, and in directions you never expected.
You feel like you can’t catch a break. And after enough setbacks and enough moments of having to be strong when you don’t feel strong, you may find yourself wondering how much longer you can keep going…
