Yesterday, the pousada I’m staying at hosted a cacao ceremony.

After drinking the cacao, everyone was handed a blank sheet of paper and a few pens and asked to draw what we want to become.

Everyone started drawing.

I just sat there.

Staring at a blank piece of paper.

Nothing came to mind. Absolute zero!

And then, after a few minutes, something dawned on me:

I am already the person I want to be.

Ten years ago, I was commuting to an office I hated every foxin’ day. My hands were exploding with eczema. I was in a dead marriage. Every morning was the same routine: get up, force-feed myself, shit, rush out of the house, commute to a place I didn’t want to be for the next eight hours, and then commute back to an overpriced rental house.

Today?

I travel.

I live in different countries.

I ride motorcycles.

I make films.

I work on my own projects.

And I’m doing the very kind of creative work that, about 25 years ago, I was effectively told I couldn’t do because I didn’t have the right “qualifications.”

Right now, I’m in Brazil, making a movie about football in Rio.

So eventually, I started drawing.

And right in the centre of the picture, I drew a huge mirror.

Because that’s who I want to become:

Myself.

Not some imaginary future version of me.

Not the person I’ll supposedly become when I have more money, when the movie is finished, when the next project succeeds, or when I finally have everything figured out.

Me. Now.

The rest of the drawing represents the things I love and the things I still want to experience and create.

🦋 Butterflies for the transformation I’ve already been through — and am still going through.

🏍️ Motorcycles and adventure.

🎥 Me with a camera, making Football in Rio.

🙌 People cheering me on — including, for some reason, Cristo Redentor himself. 😆

💃 A bit of nice company.

💰 And, naturally, a massive pile of money wouldn’t hurt either. 🤣

There are still plenty of things I want to have.

Plenty of things I want to create.

Plenty of places I want to go.

But maybe that’s different from believing I still need to become someone else before I can finally be happy with who I am.

It took me a long foxin’ time to get here.

And I’m still transforming.

But when I looked at that blank piece of paper yesterday, I realised:

I don’t want to become someone else.

I want to be myself.

And I already am. 🦋

Now I just want to see what this bastard can build. 😎

And no, this is obviously NOT the original drawing! 😆