Dream big pt. 1 - Daydreams
Well….I’ve been wanting to start this blog for a long time now. Whenever I feel like I am ready to do so, I immediately come up with something else to do. I am really good at avoiding things that I just am not ready to do. I know you get that to some degree. I am not sure why I do this though. Perhaps it’s the fear of judgment, maybe my writing isn’t perfect, no one would care to read this, my thoughts are boring? Ahh screw it, I’m just going to go for it.
I am not sure if it’s the heart burn that is driving this desire to write right now, but I am currently sitting up in bed and this feels somewhat comfortable, so I guess I’ll just tap away on this keyboard. So about the title…Dream Big pt. 1. I am going to write this blog into a series of posts, because it is a lot. I don’t want to bombard you with a super long read and if you’re like me, you have so many other things to do. I’ll keep them short.
I feel like from as early as I could remember I was always getting lost in my thoughts. I remember my mom telling me that she received a note from my teacher when I was in 1st grade, saying that I spent a lot of time daydreaming. Little me, chin resting on both fists, staring out the classroom window. I was in a world of my own, when I should have been learning something. I still do this today, but no one is telling on me now, haha! Dreams are great, especially when they become the driving force of doing something really fun.
My family’s way of showing love has always been through food. We don’t know how to cook for 1, we cook for 10. We don’t know how to welcome people into our homes without fixing them a plate. It is all love. We are very close, we always had dinner together and 9 times out of 10 mom would be making Olokoi to have with our meal.
I had moved from my family home in Houston, Texas to California when I was just 20 years old. When I wasn’t able to hop on a flight back to Houston to visit my parents, comforting thoughts of home always lead to my parents kitchen table. My parents kitchen literally has a fire place in it, so “of hearth and home” is more than just a sentiment. I had spent plenty of time dreaming of Olokoi, no not actually making a company, but just thinking about how it reminded me of my mom. Being several states away at just 20 is a lot, you still need your parents at that age and I know now that I obviously really missed and needed mine. This is kind of a crazy thing to write, but I think I always knew that Olokoi would play a role in my life. I just didn’t know how or when.
Fast forward to 2017. I am a mom, wife, I am doing the corporate gig full time (still am today), but there was a real need to be creative and I wouldn’t be satisfied until I did something about it. It was at that point that thinking about Olokoi could no longer just be another dream. So I picked up the phone, called my parents and asked them if I could bottle Olokoi and they said, “yes, but treat it like a real business”. Their blessing was enough to turn countless hours of daydreaming into starting an actual company and this is where the journey begins.