The Morning Bun: Quick blurbs with a fresh take on our Yuppie lives that we would probably share over mimosas…if it were not a weekday.
After coming “home” for Thanksgiving break for the first time in a couple years, I faced a pivotal decision: do I hit up the only bar in town on the busiest drinking night of the year and see ye old high school gang or do I play it cool like the cool California connector I try to be. On one hand, why would I go? On the other hand, why wouldn’t I go? Of course, I went with the latter, and ended up completely sober throughout the night (kidding, kidding). At first awkward, moments later pleasant, and then five minutes of generic small talk exchange with your former high school soccer teammate actually ends up being…fun. See even though we are FAR (physically, emotionally, and maturely) from our red card-getting, Got2Be hair gel-using, Ed Hardy-wearing high school days, our ROOTS still ground us. Yes, your high school classmates may have a vastly different career trajectory than you, it’s important to 1) not judge 2) bond on the absurd. High school was absurd, laugh about it. Without our relationships at every stage of life (YES, NOT JUST THOSE ABSURD YUPPIES TALKING ABOUT BUMBLE AND WORKING AT GOOGLE ON SATURDAY MORNING), we’re not the complete us. I think most lose sight of our current identity’s true foundation: our roots — be it rounding first base for the first time, playing wall ball hours past bedtime, and even getting kicked out of Hebrew School class.
The answers to Who We Are, Who We Want to Be, and Who We Should Be actually lie in our youth. Pre-brunch media days for yours truly, I was befuddled with which direction to take in my professional (and personal journey). A friend of mine gave me sound advice: ‘go back to the basics, H, write down everything you’ve ever tried since Kindergarten and explore why you tried that.’ So as self-help-y buzzword-prone as this advice sounded, I decided to go for it. 30 pages later, I landed on media and people as common threads. Try the same exercise and see what you discover.
Don’t discount your history; it shouldn’t remain a mystery.
Harrison Forman 