Craft and Crave

What’s Your Poison?

Breakfast Club

It’s the first time I heard this iconic question. I am a child of the 80s. I have a deep passion for that time period. Don’t ask me why. It is just a thing for me. Breakfast Club is one of the myriad movies that I can quote almost mindlessly. In fact, I can string together a coherent conversation using just quotes from this and a few other movies.

What’s your poison is used to ask someone what drink they would like to imbibe. I latched onto that saying immediately and have used it my entire life. I bartended in college for a short period of time and guess what I asked nearly every customer whose shadow fell across my section of the bar?

What’s the Deal with that Phrase?

The geek in me had to know the origins of this phrase (certainly Breakfast Club could not be the original starting point). It is tied to a series of poisoning deaths in the mid-19th century by a William Palmer (Palmer the Poisoner). Quite auspicious a beginning. It is simply known now as a way of asking someone what alcohol they prefer (or any consumable).

What’s the Connection to Me?

For me, it is a symbol for my life’s quest to find the perfect bourbon, cigar, coffee, steak, [insert way too many other nouns here]. I am completely obsessed with creating those powerful moments that sear memories into my brain tissue to last a lifetime.

I am also an incessant story teller. What fun is there in the ever relentless quest for moments of impact if you can’t later share those moments with others?

I have spent my life using words like “fun” and “adventure” and “chasing Everest” to describe my insatiable desire to hunt down these moments and share them with others (my poor wife has either endured many a long and winding story of moments or has had to actually endure the adventures themselves...poor soul).

Thus, what’s your poison can sum up this journey I have had for the last few decades. It has spilled over into my life’s work too. Everyday I hunt excellence in what I do and obsess over creating those moments for the next generation.

I toss out things like “your influence is never neutral”, “what echoes are your creating that you’ll never hear”, “you don’t get to choose what they remember, only what you do and say”, or “it’s not what you get when you arrive, but who you become along the way that matters” as mantras to remind me to be intentional, to hone my craft, to build these amazing moments for the athletes, parents and coaches trapped in the theater with me.

(oh gosh, am I really going to paraphrase a darned car commercial) - This boils down to the relentless pursuit of excellence in what we do and what you love. Or in other terms: we should always hone our craft, and hunt our crave.

What Does this Have to Do with You?

You, my unknowing victims, are the recipients of my new outlet for honing, hunting, and storytelling. In this new adventure I will seek and search those who so fearlessly hone their craft all while satiating and satisfying my own cravings along the way. Then I will share it with you!

Whether it is the perfect cup of coffee, a finely crafted local beer, or an artist who blows my mind I will be relentless in finding those “crafts” and the impact they have on my life and others.

It could also be the perfect spot on the beach to wait for a green flash, the most delectable piece of dark chocolate, or the swankiest cafe to rest my wrists and pound the keys a bit. I will bring to you those things I crave and share with your the feelings they evoke from me as a way to stoke your own fire for the finest.

What to Expect from Craft and Crave:

Craft and Crave is my way of connecting with this amazing new city, it’s offerings, the people, and the unique culture it delivers.

San Diego is my home now. I did not expect to fall so quickly in love with it, but just as I fell instantaneously and hopelessly for my wife, I feel for this shiny patch of desert nestled at the edge of civilization and my fire to explore, learn, hone, and hunt is fully ablaze.

In my “day passion” I coach coaches, advise parents, and guide athletes to hone their craft, chase their Everests, and iterate each day their best possible efforts. I have come to realize that entire sports, group cultures, and teams all begin to develop a common dna that weaves its way through every person who participates in that culture.

There are core behaviors, automatic habits, pervading beliefs, and intentional mantras that give life to the bloodline of that culture. Cultures live and breathe. They evolve, expand, and perpetuate themselves through these facets. Ultimately a culture can be defined or described by those two immutable elements: the Craft and the Crave.

What are the behaviors, skills, actions, and outcomes prevalent in all members and what are those values, beliefs, vision, purpose that drive them. In the sports circle I call this being “purpose-driven and values-led”: the core values give life to core behaviors and thus passion becomes purpose. For us San Diegans (whether born and bred or adopted like me) these two immutables are what do we Craft and what do we Crave?

What we Crave as a culture will give life to what we Craft. See how I transformed that and made it something worth chasing? Yeah, that is how I think. I will always try to add a purpose to what I do in order to justify the time, money, and effort spent doing it. Now you are warned.

I have these weird and wild journeys and these crazy ideas that always “seemed like a good idea at the time”. The issue is I cannot share them on my “coach” platform. I can share them with you, fellow lovers of the life adventured. This platform will be my place for those things too off-path for my day passion.

No craft too obscure, no crave too small. if it is a shiny enough object, I will hone and hunt. And then I will tell my story.

Welcome to Craft and Crave.

Coach Reed

Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee the topic, the length, or the media. Sometimes I will touch a nerve inside you with something you love and other times, you may think “eh”. You pick your poison. Some days I can describe my newly found Craft or Crave in short form and get you back to your regularly scheduled programming. Others, I may ramble a bit. Bear with me. Finally, some things are best written, some need to be spoken, and others may simply need a picture. Again, what's your poison.