Change your life not your dreams

Almost 9 years ago I went on a road trip with my folks to the East Coast. You have to understand, I’m an only child, and a road trip at age 16 when cell phones were only for the rich and famous and came with cords connected into your car, digital cameras weren’t even thought of, and laptops?... why would someone put a computer on their lap? You’d brake your legs if you set that bulky thing on your lap! Just to paint the picture a little more, at sixteen I wasn’t so sweet looking…I was just plain awkward with my short curly hair, braces, and painfully looking nerdy glasses from Wal-mart. Now during this part of my life, and until I left for college years later, I worked at Rosa’s Italian Restaurant in Visalia for Songe and Luigi and I loved it. I love the people, the food, the fast stressful pace. Talking with strangers and making them feel like family became my favorite activity. I realized I love to love people and I knew that running and managing a place of my own would allow me to do this. This became my answer to “what do you want to do when you grow up?” for the next 7 years. With each pit-stop on our family trip out East, came more ideas, more visions of thematic venues, and more passion to actually pursue this wild hair that had begun to grow inside of me. This road trip, accompanied with the lack of distracting devises, gave me one of two options; stare at the back of my fathers thinning hair or sketch out every detail of “my” place on my Five Star Green notebook pad. A menu, a name, different thematic booths and tables, policies…I began to dream.