♕ marisol mercer & kyle donovan ♕ → «please, just let me explain.» «how the hell did you find me?»

Today’s guest curator, Kyle Donovan, 

explains how he went from slinging to patenting, 

When good brother Maine first asked me to do “One Love Tuesdays” some time ago I was not ready. Then for the added pressure I was told I could write about whatever I wanted, even I didn’t know which way my mind would sway.

The truth is, this is “One Love Tuesdays” but I must confess to more than one love.  See, I love life, I love to create, I love to learn, I love to laugh, I love silly ideas and I love to make a difference. I also believe strongly in the ever-loving force that “Anything is Possible.”

By statistical accounts I should be selling drugs, no longer here on this beautiful earth with you or writing my “One Love Tuesdays” from an 8 x 8 room with steel bars as my door and window.  

Though they played no role in my life, each night I pray for my mother and my father because they did give me life, breath and praying grandmothers who sourced my love of life.

I remember my first money making venture with my cousin at 15 years old, yeah I won’t lie, it was slinging.

See we would go through the trash or find bottles and cans on the street and “sling” them down because sometimes they would have leftover soda in them and we wanted to get all the liquid out. We would do this over and over so we wouldn’t have a messy liquid mixture at the bottom of our bags that we had to stick our hands in again later while sorting the bottles from the cans to earn our five cents per recyclable container.  

I learned early the value of hard work and that by applying it I could work my way out of any circumstance no matter what the statistics were. I learned that I could start a photography business at the age of 19, a business magazine without ever being in or worked in the industry and that a poor kid from the projects in Brooklyn could end up in China manufacturing his own invention all because of this ever-loving force that “Anything is Possible.”

What college or business school taught me this? None. It was this sheer belief that lives somewhere in all of us that Anything we want to do is Possible. Moreover the only thing that stops us from living out this belief is us. This belief inspired a young kid to go out and start his own photography business at 19 and that he could invent and design a fork, spoon, knife, cup and plate the way no one had before. That same belief many would and did call silly -- that without any experience I could and would do something that I had never done before all because I believed in myself. Even sillier is that the government agreed with my belief and issued a patent on something that once only lived in my silly little head.

I accepted this “One Love Tuesdays” at this time for two reasons.  

One was in the hope that I inspire at least one of you to go after your silly little dreams, your aspirations, to go after that idea with all that you have and whether you succeed or fail enjoy your journey. The second, is to ask for your support as I continue on my silly little journey of bringing my iCup & iPlate inventions fully to life. Even more than your pledge for my Kickstarter campaign, I really want you to be able to be the first to hold these inventions in your hand … and to smile and laugh at this silly little boy and his silly little ideas of a fork, cup and a plate that with no experience, internship, backing from parents or college education made you feel that “Anything is Possible.”

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/797097782/icup-and-iplate

My sincere thanks in advance for your pledge and support.

Blessings and vision,

Visit Kyle's Kickstarter page (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/797097782/icup-and-iplate)