Gamble Everything For Love
In search of everything beautiful & important.
Make a list of things you need, leave it empty / Except for number one, write "love."
-Ben Lee
I’ve never been a betting girl. I have a pretty severe aversion to gambling. For me, the fear of losing has always dominated any hope of gaining. The risk has always outweighed the possible reward.
I once stopped in Vegas with my ex-boyfriend on a roadtrip from Colorado down the California coast. We hit up Momofuku for dinner and strolled the strip, popping into each casino to see the sights. All lights and sounds and decadence. After much prompting I agreed to try my hand at a round of Black Jack, but when the ATM fee turned out to be an exorbitant $10 I counted it too huge a loss right out the gate and passed on playing. Instead I sat next to Hunter while he lost $100 in under ten minutes. The older man at the opposite end of the table lost thousands in the same stretch of time.
Moving to Paris was not a role of the dice. It was a carefully calculated and strategically planned series of events intentionally set in motion after I realized it was the one thing my heart has always returned to, but has never fully believed was possible. Two years ago (next month), my uncle passed away in his hospital bed from complications of COVID 19. Exactly one week later my dad died alone in his apartment as a result of decades of alcohol abuse. I wasn’t close with either of them at the time of their death, but they both played important roles in my early development. In first grade, when my dad refused to take care of me and my sister during a crucial point in my mother’s health, we were sent to Kalamazoo to live with her sister and my uncle. It would be months before I saw either of my parents again, but I passed the time playing He-Man with my cousin and learning chess with my uncle in his study after dinner on nights he wasn’t furious with me for things like accidentally crashing my bike into his prized Jaguar.
These losses jump-started something inside me I couldn’t easily quiet. And before too long I found myself walking the streets of Paris with my dog Esmé piecing together all the things I would need to make a viable life abroad. In reality, the actual list is quite extensive, and more than six months in I am still struggling to put some pretty important pieces into place. I have spent over twenty years doing freelance graphic design and photography, but I have never relied on it fully for my livelihood. I’ve often worried that demanding myself to be creative in exchange for a paycheck would ruin the passion I have for the process. Over the decades I have always aligned other work in tandem which has allowed me to take on only the projects I was truly excited about. It also offered me a community I wouldn’t otherwise have had, sitting isolated with my face pressed into my computer screen. Connection is incredibly important to me and I value having colleagues and opportunities for collaboration. I didn’t realize how much I took it for granted that clients sought me out for my creative reputation. Telluride is a magical vouching community.
An opportunity I have spent several months planning towards has recently been taken off the table. To say that I feel disoriented is an understatement. My disappointment might feel more manageable if so many other elements in my life were not equally precarious in this moment. Turns out the anxiety that had me crying in the cemetery was not from the discomfort of unfamiliar goodness, it was the familiar stress of not knowing where I stand, and the deafening sound of radio silence.
My Rico friend was here last weekend and unfortunately she got a front row seat to my unraveling. I wanted to be able to show her the magical life I have always dreamed of, but it felt more like a tattered tourist map, all bumps and bruises with a picnic pit-stop on the steps of Sacré Coeur. When she arrived she handed me an envelope filled with pressed wild flowers and pine boughs, little mementos from my mountain home. It came with a sweet message of support from another good friend, but emptying out the contents and arranging them on my artist’s altar made me feel like an absolute phony.
This week has felt impossible. Like everything I have been trying to build is slipping through my fingers. Esmé toppled over twice on our walk around the block yesterday. Her hind leg weakness is increasing1. She just lays there, all day. So I have been laying beside her. She rests her tiny head on my bicep and with one quick turn of her face, licks the inside of my nostril with her impossibly sneaky tongue. This week I DM’d thirty more small businesses with an introduction and a link to my design website to let them know I am looking for French clients. I heard back from four of them. One of them wants to set a meeting in two weeks.
My friends send me messages of support, trying with their whole hearts to remind me how far I’ve come and how capable they know me to be, but hard as I try, I cannot see the path forward. They encourage me to Be Fucking Brave, but I’m too terrified to be anything at all. My own words feel like a punch to the stomach, so I try to find solace in someone else’s:
Brianna Wiest | from The Life That’s Waiting
There is a path to everything you know is waiting for you, even if you don’t know what that is right now.
Sometimes, the paths we plan too intently end up limiting us in some way. There are possibilities available to your future self that your current self wouldn’t be able to consider. All your mind can pull from is what it’s known, and if you’re trying to build a life outside of that, then you’re going to have to open yourself to the possibility that not only is there a path forward, but that it may very well lead somewhere better than you thought.
Sometimes, we don’t know because we can’t know. The very fact of us knowing would disrupt the timing of what is unfolding. The very fact of us knowing would prevent us from learning the lessons that are here for us today.
And those lessons? They aren’t a due we have to pay or a purgatory we are being stuck in, they are the building blocks of the character of the person who is opening up to this next level of their existence. What’s here for you right now contains within it the wisdom and the growth needed to unlock the next phase.
I hope that instead of wondering and worrying how you will ever move forward, you can simply recall all the other times you feared you never would... and did. You can remember that you never would have imagined exactly what led you to most good things in your life, and I hope that will inspire you to keep your heart open to wonder, to mystery, to the infinite unknown through which everything beautiful and important will emerge.
Today marks six months of keeping a steady writing practice including twenty-six weeks of posting essays. Instead of pride I feel overwhemled and foolish for betting on myself. Doubling down on a creative-life, in this economy?! Risk vs. Reward. I want so badly to be on the other side of all this worry. But I’m IN it. What’s the difference between fully immersed and drowning? I’m doing my damnedest to find a path forward. I’ve got Esmé in my arms, one foot in front of the other.
SOUNDTRACK OF THE WEEK:
Mini Mix ← Link to Spotify Playlist
1. we should talk | Bleachers | everyone for ten minutes | 2026
2. I Dare You | The xx | I See You | 2017
3. American Teenager | Ethel Cain | Preacher’s Daughter | 2022
4. Somebody Else | Role Model | Spotify Singles | 2026
5. Feel Good | Charlotte Cardin | Single | 2023
6. The Crane Wife 3 | The Decemberists | The Crane Wife | 2006
7. Gamble Everything For Love | Ben Lee | Awake Is the New Sleep | 2005
NEW VOCABULARY WORDS & PHRASES | FRENCH - ENGLISH:
echographie abdominale - abdominal ultrasound
radiographie - X-ray
Esmé has another veterinary appointment on Tuesday for additional imaging. Please keep sending her your healing energy. xoxo
Sending you good career energy! And love to Esme
Sending some little pets and love to Ms. Esme, and big hugs and deep breaths to you. Our pups give us so much, glad you are taking the moments to lie with her and be present during this phase.