I started cooking for my family at the age of 18. I’d just completed first year at the University of Waterloo, and under the guidance of the expansive menus in residence, I became inspired. As soon as I left residence, finally had a kitchen again, and returned home to my parents, I became obsessed. I read all the cookbooks, watched all the cooking shows… I even wrote an article called Why MasterChef is Fake on a now defunct website that went viral.

I’ve always had an obsessive personality. I’ve always been willing to go “all-in” on my passions. No matter how short they live or how long they last. I won a poetry prize in 2019. I’ve barely written poetry since. I invented a trail racing series in 2012. It lasted a year. I even spent an entire summer creating a pop-culture podcast. It’s nowhere to be found now.

While this might not sound like the path of a person with a persistent stubbornness toward achieving their ambitions, I’ve always had a constant desire to create something special.

I truly believe that if you want to achieve something special, something with lasting change, you have to be willing to go “all-in”. This is something I’ve heard many of the greatest coaches and entrepreneurs speak to.

With each of those phases of my life, I stopped at nothing to go “all-in” on my ambitions. That is, until I stopped, and returned to nothing. Very rarely do I think that passions in life last long enough to create change. To see a metamorphosis of true development over a span of time that can impact not only yourself, but the lives of others. That level of unrelenting stubbornness has only occurred on a grand scale three times in my life. Take a wild guess from the menu up top. Running, coaching, and against the wishes of my sleep schedule, The Blue.

^{I’ll refer to ‘The Blue’ as ‘The Blue’ not out of anonymity, but because I like a little mystique and mystery.}

Throughout my life, I’ve always moved on when the path naturally comes to an end, or cut the rope short of the finish line myself. That goes for all of my favourite opportunities leading up to this point – from being a Residence Life Don at Waterloo, to working with kids at Storybook, to teaching at Western. They’ve all created positive memories. They’ve all been more than just a job for me. But the willingness to go “all-in” only occurred alongside a dedicated focus toward something else. Something greater. Throughout my life that’s been…

• Running
• Coaching
• The Blue

If I’ve learned one thing about investment over the years, it’s that it hurts so much more when you get burned. It’s happened to me with all three. Yet I’ve stuck by, fighting for the greater cause, unwilling to take no for an answer, and continuing to cultivate my own path. I’ve come out of a torrid time with injuries to be one of the best trail runners in the country. I’ve been told I’m not good enough for a basic coaching license, only to now coach professional coaches, players and analysts; and teach a university course on Coaching & Leadership to eighty undergraduate students a semester (Hey Mark!). And after years of advocating for my worth and value to The Blue, I believe I’ve reached a life-altering impasse…for the second time in my career with them.

I’ve constantly been told that it won’t work. That it’s impossible. That we can’t do things a different way. But the thing about stubbornness is that it makes you incredibly open to cultivating new pathways when others tell you no. My creative bandwidth sparks at all time highs when others close their minds to their own reality. Sometimes I wonder if it’s bad for my health to care this much. To have so much devotion and dedicated attention to creating change; or at the bare minimum, making things magical for those that deserve magic in their lives. But when something’s worth fighting for, I simply want to work harder.

The impasse is now about how to cultivate that new path. Ruminating over the mistreatments and expressing them has always gotten me nowhere. Continuing to think creatively about how I can leave a lasting impact and create something meaningful for others has always led somewhere. Dwelling in the dilemmas and stewing in the negativity has kept me from going insane, but served as a distraction from the time that should be spent on rethinking. Mistakes and failures in life are only valuable if you actively learn from those misfortunes and change your approach.

If others aren’t willing to change their approach and want to sit in their stubbornness, it’s inevitably irritating. But it won’t stop me from continuing to challenge ideas. To create something special with those that are willing to go “all-in” alongside me.

I think it’s time to ask why. Why won’t it work? Why is it impossible? Why can’t we do things a different way? If we have a culture of people truly willing to go all-in on those that we serve, these are the kinds of questions we’ll be asking every single day as we strive to do better. Open-mindedness is essential toward cultivating a correct path for those that have been willing to go “all-in” on our community for years. Harnessing that knowledge will be key in the event that I have the power to make lasting change; even if those that came before me were frightened of facing the unknown and going against their own initial ideas.

The awareness of how to build a conveyor belt riddled with succession planning and dedicated support to those cultivating their path under our guidance? That too will come in handy when I cultivate my own path once more.

Truthfully, the impasse isn’t much of an impasse for me. It’s an impasse for The Blue. Be willing to create a culture of people willing to go “all-in”. Or let go of your greatest assets and crumble. It’s already happened once. It will happen again. It’s just a matter of time.

As for me, I’ll always find a way to turn failure into fortune.