The start of our Milk & Cookie Bus Tour around NZ: Leg 1 — Northland.
I came home from an incredibly long week of work pretty bummed out the other day. I was freaking out again that I had absolutely no fucken’ clue what I was doing with my life.
To go from no shop in January last year to 3 shops in one year including moving cities with shit-all resources, I never felt so close to dancing with failure — unsure if I’d made too many crazy decisions in such a short space of time. From closing Wellesley, to building & launching Mo Bus, to a shop in Auckland University, to moving to Wellington with the Bus, then opening K Road flagship store & now embarking on a 6-week NZ Tour on our Cookie Bus. My problem is that I think of something fun or epic & then I just go for it. And then reality catches up on me & I‘m like WHY DE WHY but then I can’t really complain because, the past Deanna once thought this was a good idea. Like the time I got so addicted to custard, I ate it for breakfast, afternoon tea & for dessert every single day for weeks. Then one day, thinking custard was the world’s greatest food, I ate so much I ended up projectile vomiting it out, bringing about an incredibly graphic demise of my friendship with custard. Stupid shit I do that could have been avoided if I just realised that no sane person should be going so passionately into some decisions…because one day it might turn to…well, custard (excuse the pun). Although I must admit that my greatest weakness could quite possibly also be my greatest strength in business. Sometimes you have to dive right into the deep end where you’re on the cusp of drowning & then just paddle like hell.
I felt so tired, overwhelmed & alone & wondered if I should just quit, stop doing Moustache & just get a “regular” job. To get everything done that we did in 2016 required immense personal sacrifice & relentless hustle. Nothing we did was the conventional way of doing things but somehow, we scraped through & got the job done. I’m still not quite sure how we survived, but whilst 2016 was hard I think we’ve set a foundation to restart this little business & grow stronger in 2017. Even though I doubt myself, deep down I know Moustache is still something very special worth fighting for.
I did however get a nice & much needed break over new years as my good friend got married in Taiwan so a bunch of us childhood friends flew from NZ to Taiwan for the wedding. But coming home from Taiwan on the Monday just gone, meant I literally had 4 working days to get my A into G, get straight back into work immediately after landing, plan the Cookie Bus tour & figure out staffing, payroll & planning for the 2 Auckland stores since I’ll be gone for the next 6 weeks on tour. The stress of organising everything in such a short amount of time, put me back in that bad place again where I not only didn’t eat or sleep, but even though I knew surely I must be sleep deprived & hungry, the stress meant I didn’t even feel tired or hungry at all. The human brain is fascinating. Simply incredible how much your mental state affects your physical state. Which is why humans can do extraordinary feats if only their mind is strong enough to conquer it.
J said this to me one day, “You just sit in your car don’t you? Sometimes it’s only 10 minutes, sometimes you’re there for over an hour”. I was surprised he noticed but I do this thing. Especially in times of great pressure & anxiety, I’ll head home from work but instead of going inside, I just sit in my car. I don’t quite know why I do it. But it’s like it’s my in-between zone. Where no one or no thing can touch me. Where the world doesn’t quite exist. The car is a bubble where no work, no mess of a personal life & no news about Donald Trump can touch me. So I sit there. And I think. And I meditate. I pray. And admittedly, sometimes I cry. Now before you go pitying me as you imagine me in my little beat-up Honda pretending the world can’t see me when it’s actually very obvious there’s some weird Asian kid bawling her eyes out because all the avocado’s at Pak ‘N Save were too unripe to eat right away & THAT WAS MEANT TO BE THE ONE GOOD THING GOING ON IN MY LIFE. It’s just something I do. I’m okay. Really. Sometimes I do it without any particular reason. I know it’s weird but for me, it’s therapeutic & releases the “bad toxins” residing. They say the cure for anything is salt water; sweat, tears or the sea. And this is something I very much believe in. And now, with the pressure mounting on me to create something out of nothing for my team, I found myself sitting in my car a lot more.
With my work schedule so jam packed, I barely had time to rest but the other night it was close to midnight & I thought, I better take a break & just chill out for a sec. J noticed there was an 11:20pm session of Moana showing at the cinemas (I didn’t even know movie sessions started so close to midnight let alone animations?!).
I know it’s cheesy but Moana was the reminder I needed. The animation, storyline, music and everything reminded me how many talented people there are out there creating awesome shit. There are people out there who are smarter than you, more curious than you & at this very moment of time, are hustling harder than you.
Therefore, stop being a weak pansy tantalising the idea of quitting just because something got hard — of course it’s hard you idiot. Did you ever think it would be easy? You’re on earth to be the best version of yourself. And becoming the best version of yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be frolicking through daisy-laden fields. Diamonds are only created under great pressure & high temperatures. So get used to it baby girl.
Even if what you create is a little bit shite or you make a mistake or you plain outright fail; the point is to keep creating. Which is why this year I need to blog more.
Keep pushing, keep creating, keep going.
Anyway enough cheesy stuff for now.
At the start of the movie, J & I got into a deeply inappropriate giggling fit in the middle of the cinema because firstly, our seats were taken because the people next to us decided to take off their shoes and stretch their legs out so they were occupying both our seats & their seats. No biggie, the seats closer to the edge were empty, so we just sat there instead. But what really got me was I couldn’t stop staring at her TOES & the creepy close proximity to J’s drink. J leant over & whispered “I’m really frightened that in the dark I’ll accidentally reach for her toes instead of my drink”.
BUT GUYS. LOOK. HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA. Okay. Maybe you just had to be there. Or maybe I’m working so much that someone’s toes have now become my main source of joy.
Thank You Moana. You were a wonderful escape & reminder to keep creating.
Tomorrow. Team Mo awakes at the crack of dawn; at precisely 5am to head to Northland for a road trip organised on little sleep & much insanity, driving our 7 tonne cookie bus with no power steering up to one of the most northernmost cities in New Zealand where we know no one there.
At first I was a bit nervous venturing into such unknown territories But now I am excited to enter this next ridiculous chapter of our Moustache story. Sometimes you just gotta embrace the crazy.
If you’re from Northland, come be a part of our First Leg of our epic 6 week Road Trip across New Zealand (srsly, otherwise we will be loneliez). It’s going to be an adventure.
Much love,
Deanna x
