Does work-life balance actually exist?: Friday’s with Filar #006
Good morning beautiful people, we are back with another feel good Friday with Filar. For those keeping me accountable, yes its true, I missed last weeks. As you’ll read below there was a heavy dose of travel injected into my schedule which made it very challenging. Just an excuse, I know, but were back at it with more consistency here.
Before we get into the main idea, we have to talk about these sneakers for this weeks segment of Feet Finder 🦶🏼:
Okay, so I’ll be honest, I actually own these sneakers - and the story behind them is incredible. In 2019, I was traveling in Helsinki and stumbled into this little streetwear shop hidden by the seaport. Walking in its flooded with window light and sneaker boxes everywhere. On one of the shelves, these beauties rest amongst 100s of other sneakers. As soon as I laid eyes on them, I had to have them. (Full transparency, I had no idea what collaboration these were when I saw them, but I fell in love with the design.)
At the register all of my credit cards declined, I didn’t have enough cash, and our ship is boarding to head to Estonia. Luckily my friend Tom was with me and was willing to give his credit card a go. And when his Visa was better than mine, we were in business. We proceeded to disassemble the box so it fit flat inside my backpack and safely tuck away the sneakers in my bag. In the back of my mind there was some feeling that these were special and I needed to keep the box and definitely needed to do research when I got onto wifi.
Well, I was right.
Later on, I discovered it was a collaboration with Colette (a famous Parisian sneaker boutique) and Asics. I even read somewhere only 2,000 were made. Someone may need to fact check this. These might be my favorite sneakers I own.
THE MAIN IDEA 🙇🏼♂️:
The past 10 days have been an absolute blur. Coming off the backend of thanksgiving week, we flew down to Miami for a team offsite and to attend Art Basel. In the same week, we launched a charitable sneaker drop with David Ortiz and his Childrens Foundation, flew back, spent Sunday half working half catching up on rest, and got some studio time in Monday night. Of course you add a sprinkle of travel back to Boston for a day at the office and have to finish off some designs due today (well, almost done at this point).
But in-between all that, I had a couple dinners with some friends catching up, put time aside to read, reviewed and voted on grants for the Arts Council Im on, talk to my parents, work out almost every day, and even watch a little NBA at night.
Amongst all that busyness, at one of the dinners, the conversation of work - life balance came up. And it projected out of my mouth so confidently that I thought it would make sense to write about this week.
To me, there is no such thing as work - life balance. Its just balance. ⏳
Yes, some/most days are 12, or 14 hour work days. But even with that you can make time for the things you want to make time for. The key to balance is not faulting yourself for days you over work, or days you don’t feel like working. Its about finding work that you love to do. Or understanding if your 9-5 isn’t what you love to do, its about the other 16 hours in the day doing something that makes you feel alive.
The Endstate team at Art Basel
I specifically remember at the dinner that I asked the question what they do after work hours? The response was “we love to play games together… sometimes we’ll be up past midnight doing it”. For context my answer is usually working on another project 😅
And I love that for them. Theres something super special about people finding love in the little things. To me, they found balance as well.
But of course everyone’s situation is different. People have family, kids, responsibilities, etc. But at its core, the definition of balance is a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. The second half of that is what I love and what is written above. Its not about 50-50 split all the time. Its just about managing each day the best you can do maximize doing what you love with every breath you take.
A DOSE OF DESIGN ✍🏼 :
Another pinch-me moment of my life happened while I was away that really inspired me. While in Miami, we had the opportunity to get a private gallery tour of an artist named Antuan.
He has a tall, Cuban born artist that has a very intentional and ironic sense of humor to his work - through painting, sculptures, and massive exhibit pieces. In a time where the world is on edge and there is a war going on in eastern Europe - this piece of an AK-47 with bullets coming into the rifle was wildly interesting.
Art by Antuan
The reason I liked it so much is because I would never in a million years think of an idea like this. Its against most common sense cells in my brain. And this theme of inverted-ness was throughout his work. It really made me leave his space buzzing. The takeaways were to try and think about the other side of the coin, flip the script, and create something beautiful.
You can find more of his work here: https://www.antuanart.com/
There were plenty of other tremendous takeaways from Art Basel but this exhibit definitely meant a lot. Thanks to Antuan and his team.
Wishing you all a great weekend ahead.
See you next Friday.
Good things.
DF