Everything I Am: A Message to the Ten-Year-Old Who Had a Vision

The Life of a Modern Renaissance Man: A Video Journal, entry 17

I've been carrying a vision of my future since I was a kid. Not a perfectly mapped-out itinerary, because ten-year-olds are famously terrible at project management, but a powerful sense that art was going to be the center of my life.

Everything I Am is one of my most personal spoken-word pieces. It tells the story of that young version of me, the people who helped me grow, the friendships and creative family I found, and the conviction that my many interests could belong to the same purpose.

In this version, the poem takes on a visual life through animation by Olivia Hern. Seeing my words translated into images reminded me that collaboration can make a personal story feel bigger than the person who wrote it.

The piece is about self-fulfilling prophecy, faith, discipline, and the long game. I believe the stories we tell ourselves about who we can become influence the decisions we make today. That belief has helped me keep going through seasons when the results were nowhere near as impressive as the dream.

I want any young person who watches this to feel permission to imagine a life larger than the expectations around them. You can start before people understand the plan. Especially then. Sometimes the first person who needs to take your dream seriously is you.