We are in a fucking magazine! Yes - an official online publication reached out, interviewed and published me and Brandon and the Road Runner. Let’s get into it.
Last year, Brandon and I bought and renovated a camper. We spent about three months in the summer renovating a 2006 Sunvalley RoadRunner. We did everything from replacing the old floors and gutting the bathroom to stripping the decals and painting vintage stripes on the exterior. It was a pretty massive undertaking, but we had so much fun. I would go so far as to say, we had just as much, if not more, fun renovating the camper in the driveway as we did on the trip itself, and the trip itself was insane. Valley of Fire, Morro Bay, the Tetons!
So we get back late September, and getting back from a trip like that is always pretty weird. You know, just a few days ago, you were posted up in the middle of a forest filling your water tank from five gallon jugs in the back of your truck bed, drying your towels on a makeshift bungee clothesline and now you’re freshly showered and sitting on the couch watching Survivor like you
never left.
So anyway, we get back, and I’m looking through all the photos of the camper and I’m obsessed, already reminiscing. A little later on, I’m on Facebook and I see a Dwell article about a couple who renovated an Airstream. It dawns on me that what that couple did wasn’t all that different from what Brandon and I did that summer.
Now I’ve been following Dwell for a long time. They’ve been a constant on my Facebook and Instagram for as long as I can remember, and it wasn’t until I saw that article that I thought, ‘Maybe we could be in Dwell.’
So, I decided to make a profile and post some project photos on Dwell’s website. I figured, ‘Why not?’
Sure enough, we get an email from an editor at Dwell asking for more photos and a budget breakdown of the renovation. We were stoked. I posted those photos without any expectation of anything coming of it, but it kind of showed me that nothing is as unattainable as you might think it is.
A couple weeks later, Brian, a freelance writer with Dwell magazine, reached out. We hopped on a Zoom call with him a few days later and talked for hours about the camper, the renovation, the trip and just sort of our overall approach to life and creativity, what we do and how we do it. He was a really great guy to talk to and Brandon and I had so much fun reliving that whole experience.
I remember hanging up that Zoom call being like, ‘We just got interviewed by Dwell magazine!’ Like holy shit. It was the coolest thing, to actually be recognized for something that we put so much time and effort into, something we were proud of and something we ourselves thought was really cool. Not that you should ever seek it, but that sort of validation, especially from an established publication, and one that we’ve been following for so long, felt really good. You start to realize that you’re not that different from the people you look up to, and that the ideas you think are good, actually are good. It builds that trust you have in yourself and your decisions moving forward.
A couple months later, we woke up to the article being published. We couldn’t wait to read it. It felt pretty surreal to see our names and our photos, our story on Dwell’s website. The article talked about Path, how our business got started, our personal style and design inspiration for the camper. We feel like the article really captured how we were feeling when we had to leave the shop, what our thought process was when we decided to take another road trip and really just our overall approach to life and creativity.. what we do and how we do it.
I think the moral of this whole story is that you should never limit yourself, never write anything off as being impossible or unattainable. If someone, anyone’s got it, you can get it too - you just have to put the work in and figure out how. Don’t be afraid that you’re not good enough, don’t wait until you feel like you’re ready. Throw yourself into possibilities like I did when I posted those photos on Dwell’s website and be ready when an opportunity comes your way.
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