Vite is being destroyed by this one crucial, abandoned responsibility.

Vite is being destroyed by this one crucial, abandoned responsibility.

And it’s my fault.

 

I'm not scared of it. I'm worse than scared-- I'm indifferent. Every time I should try, I just... drift away. Into others' projects. Into helping someone else at Vite. Into anything that lets me pretend something else matters more, so that I don’t need to confront it.

 

I don’t even remember how I started to realize it. Maybe it was from when I went to try and make new ads with the same, tired photos taken 4 years ago, or the 20 terabytes collecting digital dust, memories of what we could be slowly corrupting into unplayable files, or pulling us from the brink again on the supply chain mess caused when my back was turned.

 

History, they say, doesn’t repeat itself... but it often rhymes.

 

I’ve always the one cooking, neck strained, back aching, fingers sore and worn, to deliver the dish for others to ooo and ahhhh over, and to lean back in the walk in fridge, exhausted, having only enough time to stuff a dry, half-day old PB&J down my parched throat before walking back out to do it all over again.

 

Metaphorically, of course. But, not so different from the days that I did that in an actual Michelin Star kitchen. Ironic, too, that these days I’m so pressured and stressed that I don’t even have time to make the very ramen designed, supposedly, for these situations.

 

Even this post is late, because I had so much else to do. So much else to put as priority besides that one thing, and so much else to keep from falling down so that this thing can rot, unkempt in the back, out of sight and out of mind, to a putrid slop that threatens to take down everything we’ve built.

 

From our branding, frozen in 2016 when minimalism was a radical design for ramen, to our emails, now consisting of 80% shoddy, hastily written copy that fights against AI to be seen in people’s inboxes, to our neglected social media accounts delivering increasingly tepid, corporatized content that makes my stomach churn when I see it.

 

The truth is, you can read every newsletter we've ever sent and still not know anything about us, really. You'll find fragments-- technical details, supply chain updates, little stories of the here and now that scratch the surface... but disjointed, spread few and far between like a puzzle that was never meant to be solvable. 

 

But even among it all, there’s the bright spots that still exist. The projects that we get to do with our partners, where we get new perspective, new challenges, new branding and lore and designs and excitement to work with, and sometimes it doesn’t seem so bad after all, that maybe, just maybe, we can forget about that thing that grows in the corner, day after day, month after month, year after year.

 

See, I give advice, provide free consulting all the time to others, about how to build their own brands, conduct their own storytelling, how they can grow their own followings and presence, and I diligently research for them, and take notes, and conceptualize, and write hundreds and hundreds of pages for one-off projects, and I...

 

I haven’t done this for Vite. For me. Our own house crumbles through an insidious indifference, a quiet certainty that everyone else’s story matters more than our own.

 

At the end of the day, I can convince myself that I can take a backseat to others. Because I can tank more than others, I tell myself, and I’m not lying. I can suffer through so much more, endure so much worse, fight through when everyone else has given up, and it... still hurts.

I can survive it all, while others might not be able to, and so I’ll bear the brunt of all I can, and put myself, and put Vite to the backburner, and relentlessly push through it all, no matter what, because the others have burned already, despite trying my hardest to prevent it, and I’ll drag us through anyway, and never quite know how. But never without pain. Never without new scars. And never without someone else leaving, someone else hating.

 

It's like a restaurant where the wiring sparks new fires every day. You sprint from room to room, lungs burning from smoke, stumbling over uneven, charred floorboards, throwing whatever water you can find on each new ember, praying there’s none that have grown larger while you’re distracted. Your hands are covered in burns that never fully heal, your throat raw from the ash and smoke clawing at it with every exhausted breath.

The answer mocks you from behind every scorched wall; shut off the power, tear out the wiring, rebuild it from the ground up-- And yet, shutting off the power means the freezers stop running, the inventory spoils, the paychecks stop. Fifteen people’s livelihoods go dark while you fix what's broken, with no guarantee you’d ever be able to start again. So you keep running, even as you feel the floor creaking beneath each step, weakened by water damage and endless fires, knowing that one day it'll give way completely.

 

Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others, they say, but you can’t burn out if there’s no oxygen, right?

 

I don't know why. Maybe it feels selfish to say I should be placed above anyone else. It’s not that I think I’m worthless-- far from it. Nor is it a savior’s complex-- at least, not in the traditional sense where one derives their self worth from who they think they can save. Something far more mundane, far less exciting, and much more coldly logical. If I can take the pain, and they can’t, then isn’t the right thing to do to endure in their stead?

Maybe I'm too habituated by everything that's happened in these 8 long years. Maybe I'm so used to my world being consumed by flames that I can no longer burn from the scars that have scabbed over again and again, and I’ve stopped feeling the ash settling in my lungs because the layer’s too thick to feel anything anymore.

 

And above all, I'm tired. I’m so, so tired.

 

Every day I’m running from a cliff that crumbles behind me, watching machines break down, supply chains snap, and people give up, waiting to be swallowed up by that relentless void. And every time I stop to drag someone along, I know that cliff is coming faster, and faster, and faster. And some of those people I have to let go into that void, and some I have to pass by, and keep moving forwards, through the ashes and smoke, blind to everything in front of me.

 

I’m afraid that the indifference will extend past myself. I’m afraid that indifference will extend to all those around me-- that I become one of those that I’ve despised, the ones who will pass by everyone without a second thought, and become numb and indifferent to others, because all they can see is their own blinding pain in front of them.

 

But then there are the bright spots, the moments where we see again-- the collaborations with partners that pull us up from the smoke just long enough to remember what oxygen tastes like. New perspectives. Fresh challenges. A glimpse of what we could be when we're not suffocating on the ashes and smoke choking our lungs. These projects light up the world around us, show us the skies and the prospective future, make it all feel possible again... and then they end, and we fall back into the dark, back into the smoke, back into fighting fires and staggering desperately away from the crumbling cliff behind us.

 

What does it say that those are the only moments I live for, now? That the only time I can see clearly is when our partners pull us up from the smoke for those brief, shining moments? But those contrasts of clarity, those beautiful gulps of clean, fresh air makes the return to darkness harder each and every time, makes the blind sprint from that crumbling cliff feel even more desperate, even more pointless.

 

I can’t see ahead of me. Not really, and especially not now. I can see the bright spots, if I could only survive until then. I can see the times when I might find some relief, some appreciation, a measure of respite. But I don’t know what direction to go... just that I’m tired of being in this smoke.

 

We need your help. It’s time to do something different. The cliff is still coming, the fires still burning, and with no time to sit down, breathe, and rebuild it from scratch.

 

In a few months, things will change, and drastically. I know what I want to do. I know where I want to be. But I don’t know the right direction to go through all the smoke and fire.

 

I want to listen to what you have to say. I want to know what stories we should tell. I want to stop this cycle of over and over again, and stand where I can breathe freely, all the time, and rest.

 

I don’t have a list for you to sign up to. I don’t have a bundle to sell or an offer to make, or a special insider group for this. Just a quiet request that, as we approach these changes, as I try to put us above others for once, that you might lend an ear and listen to our story. That you might talk to us, help us find our direction, and understand where we should go moving forwards.

 

Now just one question: Where should we go?

 

-Tim