Why I’m Writing Dis

Welcome to a bank of stories you can feeeeel.

In order to build an audience, you must put yourself out there.

This quote been clouding my sense of self. Raining down ideas to be more vocal. I rise the next day, dusting off that tripod to tell my phone about design, futbol, travel.

Whatever’s pulsating on my frontal lobe that day.

Then I play the video back… and that nausea bubbles up: This isn’t my way.

I don’t thrive off noisy timelines. I make sense when I can ruminate, scribble, and edit before launching what I’m feeling to my people.

That second step is why I’m writing dis.

Since I was 17, writing has been my medium. It’s just taken shape in endless ways.

Today, I own and operate VIJN, a tactile company bringing people together.

made bowls to link my real friends

It’s a practice of making, testing, and connecting around objects with better use cases. It started with one perspective:

Everyone deserves to feel all their senses animated at once.

It’s the best way to stay present. So the objects around us need to do their part in creating this sensation, simply and often. To get here, I didn’t study design, nor engineering, nor supply chain. I spent a decade writing.

Sports Illustrated, adidas Originals, Netflix. Journalism, social copywriting, universal truths by the dozen. My most prized possessions are these journals I’ve written since 2016, a collection of considerations across my winding epiphanies.

VIJN earned its first product when I asked myself:

Why aren’t bowls made for hands? We hold them, snuggle with them, pass cravings to loved ones in bowls. This pervasive observation became a brief, which led to a technical drawing. 3D prints and two years later, wet, sandy toes.

We were in Nazare, Portugal and my heart was pounding fr.

This notion of bowls for hands became physical samples, handmade by a team dedicated to my VIJN. A humbling moment I still get goosebumps about.

Time passing made it clear: my path has always been charted by writing.

To observe, to reflect, then to write anything into existence.

I’ll be writing about my observations in design, community, experiences, travel, and the things I can’t yet see. Walking down these ideas until they become tactile.

Grateful to grow familiar with you.

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