The Place: Fair Bean Coffee

The Cup: Serena told me she always tries something new when she stops here so for our meeting, she selected “The Weirdo”.  Seems appropriate. What is “The Weirdo”? An iced white chocolate mocha with lime.  Yep, lime.  I can think of few places lime isn’t a welcome addition. Lime is divine. My coffee…well, the thought never crossed my mind. Serena says it was tasty. But she’s really nice and not a complainer, so to be fair, I’m not sure we can trust her assessment. She did drink it though. I had the exact same drink. Minus the white chocolate and minus the lime; also known as an iced coffee. I know, I’m quite mavericky.

Background: Cup 25, Cooper Veazey sent an email introducing Serena and I, suggesting we get together for coffee. Absolutely! Turns out, Cooper and Serena met just a few weeks prior when they sat near each other at a painting class. I love that former “strangers” are meeting strangers and then telling them about me and the stranger project.

Much like the way Serena orders a coffee, she lives life looking for the adventure. Her life is lived in full color, at full speed.  She’s a dreamer and more importantly, she’s a doer. Before we get to her story, let’s take a quick look at some:

Common Grounds

1. What is the last thing you fixed? The tripod for my camera.
2. What is your guilty pleasure? Dessert, any dessert. I look at the dessert before I look at the rest of the menu.
3. How did you make your first buck? Washing tractors.
4. What would be the worst job for you? Sitting in a cubicle, doing the same thing every day of my life.
5. Where is your favorite place to eat in Austin? Swifts Attic.
6. Who has been the most influential person in your life so far? A photography instructor who showed me how to use studio lights – because it got me to where I am today.
7. What is a food you just cannot live without? Pasta.
8. What is something you’ll regret not doing if you don’t do it? Making the most of every day.
9. What is the best gift you ever received? Someone’s time. It’s the most valuable gift.

When was the last time you found yourself in a situation where you felt unfulfilled or unhappy? Have you ever looked around and wondered to yourself, how did I get here? Maybe this isn’t familiar to you personally, but I suspect you can think of a few friends who’ve been here. Maybe you served as their sounding board as they tried to figure out a new path.

Sometimes, it seems, we find ourselves in a place we hadn’t imagined, and instead of looking for the nearest exit, we linger. Then we take a seat. Then we get comfortable; and although our reality isn’t as happy as we wished it were, it’s predictable, it’s certain, and we find the unknown far too frightening to get out of our seats and head for the door.

If I had to guess at what Serena’s superpower is, I’d have to say it’s that she’s immune to this type of mindset.

With a Bachelor’s degree in accounting and an MBA, Serena spent ten plus years doing high-end finance in the resort/hotel industry. She references her first day on the job as a brand new college graduate when I ask about the best mistake she ever made. “I was hired for a job that I wasn’t qualified to do. Every night I’d go home and read through my accounting books to try to figure out what they’d been talking about all day, ” Serena says, adding that the experience forced her to “figure it out”, which proved to be an important lesson.

Her work had her traveling the world. It also had her working 80 hours a week. When she wasn’t traveling, she spent three hours a day in traffic, just getting to and from her job. Certainly there were aspects of her job she enjoyed, but  eventually, she found herself very dissatisfied.

This must be where she invoked her super power and said, “Let’s try this again,” and headed back to school – this time getting a degree in graphics/web design/photography. Today, she makes a living as a food and product photographer in what she describes as her second career.

I told her I found the choice surprising – finance to art; from left brain to right brain. Serena pointed out that what she loves about photography is mastering studio lighting, which she explains is really just math ratios. (Ahh, no wonder I’m no good at photography. Unless Instagram counts – then I’m a genius! #filter)

In November of 2012, Serena hitched up a U-Haul filled with the stuff of her life, and waved adios to California – in pursuit, once again, of a new adventure. A new adventure called Austin.

Serena tells me that anytime anyone ever asked her, “What’s the one thing you’d do if money were no object?” she always answered the same way: “I’d be a pastry chef.” Since this woman obviously takes living a life at full speed very seriously, she decided to enroll in the nine-month pastry program at Le Cordon Bleu, as she worked on building a photography business in her new city. When I ask how it’s going, she says with zero hesitation, “I’m loving every minute of the day!”

When she says every minute of the day, she’s not kidding. That’s a near-accurate description of her work schedule. In order to get the Externship she desires, she needs pastry experience – and not just from the classroom. The most  significant thing that happened in Serena’s life in the last 30 days was her starting a job as a baker at The Steeping Room (I begin salivating at the thought of those delicious scones, and hope Serena doesn’t notice). Her day begins at 6 am at the bakery, followed by class from 10-2. Then from 2-8, she works on her photography business, and from 8-11 she makes time to hang with the important people in her life.

Once I snap out of my scone-induced dreamland, I consider what she’s just described to me and my head spins. Every day? Yes, every day. And if that weren’t enough, she decided she might like to do some food writing, so she enrolled in a writing class, at a whole other school. AAAHH!!!  Well, at least she has those scones to look forward to each morning.

Where does this drive come from? Serena tells me she’s had it her whole life. When I ask her to define it, she tells me it’s probably from a fear of failure and super-high expectations. A lesser know fact about Serena is that she is a twin. Her sister was born with some health issues that required a lot of her parents’ attention. Serena says that as much as she imagines they might have wanted to be there for her, they had other pressing issues which pulled them away, leaving Serena to assume responsibility for herself. “They set the rules, and I followed them,” Serena says explaining that there wasn’t much room for error; the bar was set high.

This knowledge may help to explain Serena’s answer when I ask about her proudest achievement to date. She pauses, and I imagine she’s torn between answers such as getting her MBA, the success of her first career, climbing Machu Picchu, building a successful photography business. Too many choices. Finally, she says, “That’s a hard question. I don’t look at it like that. I just look at it like, I’m living my life.”

Living, she is. I begin to wonder what her secret is, and she offers it up when she talks about her schedule. “People look at me like I’m crazy when they see my daily schedule. I look for a balance between work and play. At the end of each day, I want to say, ‘I learned a lot, I gave as much as I could, and I enjoyed every moment of the day. If I have a bad day, I have no one to blame but myself because I made that day. I try to plan out each day so I can have the best time.”

I ask Serena about a bucket list and her response is, “I don’t have one. If I think about something, I just do it.” We talk about some of the things she’s “just done” and they are all travel-related. Last year it was a 2 1/2 week cruise to Italy, Greece and Turkey. She spent three months in South America – exploring Peru, Chile, Buenes Aries and Patagonia – which, incidentally, is the most beautiful place she’s been.

As I review the notes from our conversation, I am struck by something I view as significant. The catalyst for the switch from her life in finance to her life of passions – photography and pastry school – was a dislike of all the travel she had to do and working 80 hours a week. I find it interesting that when I add up the hours she puts in, just Monday through Friday, it’s 70. I imagine weekends aren’t totally work free so that likely puts the figures pretty equal. And the thing she works so hard in order to do, is travel.

Funny how choice and perspective give new life to our experiences. Those things we dread, when we’re in a place where we aren’t feeling fulfilled or happy, are often the very things we are drawn to when we are in balance. If not drawn to, then we at least tolerate them, accepting that they are simply aspects of this life we’ve designed. You reflect on what matters most to you, you create a map of how you’ll get there and anything that isn’t awesome, is viewed as merely speed bumps along the road to achieving what matters.  We accept the trade-offs.

Last weekend, my brother and I took a backpacking trip to Big Bend. It was an incredible experience. The views as we summited the South Rim were spectacular. The weather was perfect, and when we had the energy to talk, we enjoyed deep conversation.

We had a map and at one point found ourselves at a fork in the road. Confident we needed to take the route on the right, we set off. Up, up, up we climbed. Up, up, up some more  – the switchbacks were relentless. Finally, it leveled out and we caught our breath. A few feet ahead I saw a sign for a back-country campsite.  Huh? No, we already passed all of the campsites, I thought to myself. Hesitantly, I asked for the map. Please be on the right path, I tried to will reality. Nope. We had taken a wrong turn and were headed in the wrong direction.

Imagine I tell you that we didn’t turn back; we just kept going. We looked at how far we had come, all the hard work of the climbs, and not wanting it to have been a waste of time and energy, we ignored the fact that we were going the wrong way. That would be ridiculous. No matter how long we traveled on that path, we would have never ended up where we were going. I wouldn’t follow this logic on a hike, but I know this is the exact choice I’ve made, more than once, in my life.

Serena recognized she was on the wrong path and rather than keep going, hoping she’d change and turn into someone who enjoyed the work and the life, she found a new map. Her background in finance perhaps proved most valuable, in her ability to recognize sunk costs. The time she’s spent was gone; but the time left before her was a resource she could use to set out in a different direction.

Serena has such a great head on her shoulders, I wonder if there is anything about herself she’d change. She tells me the thought of networking is tortuous for her. She admits she’s never been excited about going into a room where she knows no one and striking up conversation, adding, “I’m trying to be more open to talking to strangers.” Knowing Serena is someone driven by continuous personal improvement, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that’s she’s clearly working on this. I mean, she’s drinking her Weirdo, while talking to another one. Well, potentially anyhow.

What’s something she does each day that she feels contributes to her overall success? Serena says she reads food magazines. She looks through them, in part, to find new recipes to try out, but she’s largely focused on the photography. “It’s helps me see what’s new – current trends.” Serena looks at a photo and then tries to recreate it or make it even better.

If given 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, Serena’s message would be, “Live every moment like it’s the last. Play hard and work hard. And always eat dessert!”

We don’t know what we don’t know. But once we do know, we have a choice to make. Continuing down the same unhappy path is still a choice. Serena is a reminder to choose happiness. Our time here is a finite resource – sunk costs are sunk, and the cost of lost opportunities are pricy. When we get to the fork in the road, we should listen to our gut and follow our heart. And that fork on the dessert plate? Pick it up and enjoy.

To learn more about Serena, check out her website or you can follow her on Twitter.