#bungalower

I was sitting in my house this afternoon and thought to myself, what if we did a Inhabit: Hurricane Irma Edition? So I set out on foot and began saying hello to anyone I met along my walk. I asked who are you? Did the hurricane break anything in your home? What was your favorite hurricane food? Did the hurricane match up with what you expected of it? 

“I’m brock. This is Olivia. We are from Los Angeles. We have lived here about a month and a week.” Olivia: “I just ate some leftovers- I made rice, sweet potato, avocados, and squash.” Brock: “I had some cereal. The milk was still cool enough to eat it with.” *Olivia wanted me to note, its Brock’s Birthday and they were able to thaw waffles just enough to celebrate!

“My name is Aaron. Nothing major other than my pride. We lost power and I had my generator and a truck inside the garage and the garage door required power to open it. So I got up this morning and I’m like, ‘Let’s get the generator started’ and I couldn’t open the garage door because there is a safety lock mechanism. Anyways, I was able to pull the generator through the doorways in the house! Its running. Thank God”

“My name is John Dickson Sr. I own Florida Fitness Concepts. It’s a personal training center here on Mills. I’m just cleaning up the parking lot.

“I’m Cindy Silverbach (Not pictured is her husband Grier). I’m the landlord. We own this property at Oregon and portland.” Do you have any parting words for Hurricane Irma? “Thank goodness you’re gone! She could have been a whole lot worse.”

My name is Sabrina Felker and that’s Kevin, my husband. We are clearing off the tree that landed on the top of our guesthouse. We had a tree land on all of our electrical wires attached to our house [as well] and we have to get that attached before they’ll even hook up power again. But our house is still here, so that’s good.”

“My name is Rey Perez and this is a triplex that I own. My mom lives here now and I am surveying the damage. She stayed with me, but she wanted to come back to her little house.”

“I’m mary and I’m cleaning up my yard. I had to have broccoli cole slaw from Costco. I wanted something healthy instead of a bunch of junk.”  

I’m Tommy McLaughlin. I work at home depot and I go to ucf and I’m a veteran. I’ve drank copious amounts of beer. Probably a case. Good old fashioned American Budweiser!”

Pictured below are Tommy and all his buddies hanging with their dog, grilling out, and enjoying the beautiful post hurricane weather. 

Who are you? I am Jarrod Uddin. I am a millennial motivational speaker. I am the guy that jumps in and helps students that are getting ready to graduate college and those who just dipped their toes in the career market out of college. I help them avoid the early quarter-life crisis. I am the warning side before they get to the end of the cliff. I am the one that helps them find their purpose, their passion, their inner strengths and helps them become more self aware and get on the path to where they really want to be in life. I am part African-American and the other half, Eastern Indian. A lot of my family is from the Middle East and so in our family, to be successful we are often taught that you need to be a doctor or an engineer or go to one of the careers that is going to make a lot of money. I’m one of the few people in my family from that side that actually broke from that tradition because I was not good enough at math. I did not like science. I looked at a couple of the course sets for bio pre-med and I was like, this is totally not for me. I totally can’t do this! So I’m the one in the family that had to find a different way of doing things. 

You were talking about the quarter life crisis, can you give me a brief example of what the first sign of a quarter life crisis is? Panic. That’s number one: panic. You see the end of the road coming and fear hits you and you just don’t know what to do. You don’t know what's next. Because personally, that was me. I went to school for broadcast journalism because I knew I was going to be a newscaster or a journalist. Matter of fact, I thought I knew since I was in the 6th grade. [I] got to the end of my college career, I was a month away from crossing the stage and getting ready to graduate and then discovered, holy crap, after three internships this is not what I want. I thought this is what I wanted. I thought this was going to be the lane for my passions, my strengths and talents.

[It was not] the industry I thought it was at all. And so I’m sitting here panicking. ‘Okay, I have to move out of my dorm in 5 minutes. Literally. I’m graduating and I have no job prospects. No offers. What am I going to do with my life?’ When that questions hits you and fear kicks in. I think that is the beginning of the early quarter-life crisis. I spent my first nine months after college graduation homeless. Sleeping out of the backseat of my car. Now, I will say this, I could have asked for help. I could have moved back home; I’m from Michigan. So I could have moved from Tennessee (where I was going to school at the time)back to Michigan, lived with my parents. I could have taken a job offer from some people in my family. Ultimately, I knew it wasn’t going to be what I wanted. I knew I was going to have to live under someone else’s rule’s. And I knew that I was going to be miserable going to clock into some office doing something that had nothing to do with the core of what I was good at, but I knew one thing I had to give myself a chance to find out what I was worth. Whether it was even if I had to go scrub toilets somewhere or just make some crap money for awhile. I knew it would have at least been my choice. 

Where are we currently and what is important to you about this space?

Currently we are at Rollins College. It’s perfect because it’s the summertime. School hasn’t gotten back in session yet, so it’s empty. I love it because it’s outdoors. We’re out in the grass. There’s water. There’s air. And it’s also, I like being around prosperous areas. Areas that are well manicured. Well-kept. Where there is sense of pride for a community. I come here just to kind of clear my head. I spend so much time in front of a screen, writing, creating, thinking, but out here there’s something about fresh air and the outdoors that just brings so much clarity to your brain. It’s like a rush of energy and ideas can just come in. I spend time at other places, but this is one of my favorite because it’s almost a best kept secret. You can just chill. It’s very simple. It's outside, it’s right by the water. And water, just flowing water also helps ideas to flow. That’s why I love it. 

If you could condense the meaning of your business into a short mission statement, what would that be? So, the name of my most recent program is called “From Zero to Impact”. It is a college workshop that helps students to answer life’s two biggest questions: Who am I and what should I be doing with my life? 

Do you feel like you’ve been successful with the launch of this program? Yes—well, more than anything, I’ve been successful with answering those questions. My talent is helping other people find their answer to those questions. Mainly through just sharing my story or experiences. The mentorship, the work, the diligence that was all required to get through that phase of life. The launch of the program is actually coming up at the end of the month. September 1st. But I’ve also been kind of piloting it at a few different places. A few different schools. One I piloted last week actually for a student leadership conference and it went over very well. So the launch is coming up under 30 days. We’ll see how it goes. You mentioned a little bit about how you knew since the 6th grade what you were going to do with your life and then you had a crisis that changed the course of your career. Is what you are doing now completely different altogether or are there similarities to what you envisioned? Yes and no; everything is a yes and no question. So, I’ll start here. In my book I write a chapter that’s... I interrupted to ask the name of the book. The name of the book is called, Unfollow The Crowd: The New Education for Young Millennials Who Crave Purpose, Freedom, and Impact. So for me, when I was in the first grade, I think that was the first time I discovered that I had a passion for words and word structures. English classes were always my best and favorite classes. Anytime the teacher asked us to stand up or someone to volunteer to stand up in the class and read this book out loud or this page, I’d be the first one to volunteer and stand up. I would love doing it. Anytime we had a writing assignment, I loved writing. I loved spelling tests. I just had a fascination with words and talking. And so in 6th grade we took a trip to the news station. They had us all sit in the studio and we got to watch newscasters do a live newscast. And I thought to myself, this is great, this is it, because I finally discovered this is where I could spend those passions and talents—reading, writing, reciting, and delivering information to the public that’s relevant. So from the 6th grade, all the way to the end of my college career, I just thought that’s what I was going to do. That was my story and I was going to stick to it. 

And you’re kind of doing that now. I am kind of doing that now. The only difference is, I discovered a different way to do it. Which is motivational speaking. I always loved mentorship. So hey! Why not write books and a blog or those kinds of things that can help people with their lives. Why not get on stage and speak? I thought it was only going to be through a news camera. [However], there was also opportunities for speaking in colleges, leading workshops, doing pep rallies. So it is the same thing, it’s just not the way I thought it would turn out, but it’s better. What is your advice for those who are struggling with their current endeavours? I say, number one: get very, very clear on what it is that you really want. Very, very clear. I found that the time I struggled the most at my career was when I jumped out of my lane of my deepest passions and strengths and just tried to apply for any job or something that someone else told me that I should do because this is what is gonna make you a lot of money or this is what is going to to make you happy. When I let other people define me for me, that’s when I started to lose. That’s when I got frustrated. And frustration is just lack of goal attainment. That’s all it is. But if you can, get honest with yourself, by yourself, about what it is that you really want.

Maybe you really do want to practice law. Or maybe you really do want to become an author or a cartoon illustrator, whatever it is. No matter how long it’s going to take to get there, start by being purely honest with yourself about what it is [and] write it down. Assess what your internal strengths are. Your real strengths. The things that you love to do so much that you’ll do it for free, but maybe you’ll learn to do it well enough where someone pays you for it. Be honest with what that is. Write it down. Most of us already know the answers.

Who are you? I’m Dustin Wyatt Carpenter. I am 28. I’m a Director of Development at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. I also chair the Pinecastle Historical Society board. I grew up in Lake County, Florida and spent about 6 years in Gainesville doing grad and undergrad. I moved to Orlando 6 years ago by chance. I like motorcycles, skateboarding, travel and anything from India [Dustin has visited India twice over the years]. I love personality assessments. I’m an ENFP. On the Enneagram I’m an achiever and romantic individualist. 

Where are we and why is this space important to you? Right now we are at my house. I got this about three and a half years ago now. It’s important to me because growing up my dad (he works for Orange County Sheriff's Office) would always buy and sell homes. We moved every 2 years pretty much on the dot. After about a year of living in Orlando, I ended up really wanting to pursue buying a home and an investment that I could turn around and flip in a couple years. I actually had a contract on a different home across the street and stumbled across this. It was the first day it was listed. They didn’t even put the ‘for sale’ sign up yet. I lowballed. They accepted. I was super pumped on it and it went from a place that I was looking just for an investment to flip to something that I completely fell in love with. After I signed the contract, the real estate agent didn’t want to drive back to let me in. So they gave me the 4 digit code to get in and it was the same code that my dad would always use for all the things he had. So it was a number I would consistently use. Out of all the different numbers that could have happened, I was pretty stoked on that. I think I might have had a tear come out. It seemed like it was too good to be true for sure. And I definitely got it at a steal because being at that time, 25 and getting a house, it was way outside of what I was even imagining.

Editor’s Note: Dustins house is a moto and skate emporium. He currently has 8 different bikes, a garage full of  tools to work on his bikes, and a huge skate ramp in the backyard. 

If you check your instagram, the lifestyle you have curated online is completely different than the suit and tie you wear by day. Can you tell me about the stark contrast; and was it intentional? I don’t think it was necessarily intentional. Maybe in some sense. I remember changing my facebook name to Dustin Wyatt so that people looking at me when I was applying for internships and business school wouldn’t see my skateboarding, social profile, and all that stuff and potentially affect my job opportunities. My professional identity was just Dustin Carpenter, ‘MBA dude, whatever…’ And my personal life being the skateboard, moto, kinda grungy hippy kid at that time. I definitely feel like both are me and I’ve just kind of grown into them. But I can also see of the dichotomy between running into friends while at work and kind of getting a double look or vice versa where I’m out skating/riding and run into a colleague. It’s kind of funny when they see the other side of me I guess. 

As he continued talking, he told me more about his “chance” move to Orlando. So, long story short, my plan was to after grad school, move to India and that was set in stone for about a year. I had one semester left and I lived overseas for a few months and while I was over there I met this guy in Rome that pretty much offered me a job in Orlando with Orlando Health. Wait, so you met the guy in Rome? I met him in Rome. On a cruise as a part of the trip. I lived in Prague for a month. And I was headed to India after the end of this trip. He was kind of talking about this job opportunity. And I was like, “Sorry, I’m moving to India” and at this point I had super long hair, full beard. I don’t know what he was thinking, even seeing me. I think at this point I thought it was cool to not wear shoes to class at UF. I wasn’t too interested; I kind of started meeting some of the leadership and stuff there and came in for a few different tours and interviews and I just felt like it was something I couldn’t pass up and that kind of spurred into moving back to Orlando. Would you say that you’re happy now with where you are?

That’s a tough question. In one aspect, absolutely! I know I’ve been extremely fortunate and that I’m where I am today because of those who have inspired, mentored or invested in me throughout my life. I also love this city and have an amazing community here. I’m beyond grateful to work at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and have the opportunity to be a part of something that is truly transforming the arts and culture of this city. In my profession and volunteer roles I get to serve others and invest in this community, which brings me a lot of fulfillment. So to answer your question is yes.

But in another aspect, not quite. I struggle with being content in the day to day. Personal growth is very important to me and I know I there’s so much more potential I could be living out of–– from being more available to family and friends, reading more books, diversifying investments, meditating more, going to bed before 2am, loving others better, procrastinating less, saying “no” more often…the list goes on (there’s a real list). I’m improving, but it’s a slower process than I’d like.

Earlier we got photos of you skateboarding and riding motorcycles, how did you begin doing both? I think the motorcycle passion definitely started when I was 12 or 13. I forget [the exact age], but one of my birthdays I remember my dad wheeling in a Yamaha TTR125 and being so pumped on that. And at this time we lived out kind of in the country - Montverde/Howey In the Hills area. So, I rode that thing all the time. I loved it. And skateboarding, kind of around that same time frame. I remember anytime I could go to Vans Skatepark, I would take the bike and skateboard and head over that way.