Letter From The Editor | Street Trucks

Living the Life and Printing the Passion!

A WEEK OR TWO BACK, I DECIDED TO TAKE SOME TIME AWAY FROM TRUCKS FOR A DAY AND HANG OUT WITH A GOOD BUDDY IN MY TOWN WHO HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS INDUSTRY WE ALL LIVE AND LOVE. CJ and I spent a full day cutting and welding a super cool custom fireplace, and he even let me run some beads with his welding equipment. A full day of no phone calls, no emails, no PMs and definitely no corporate meetings. Just a solid day of pure people and absolutely no jack stands. We should force ourselves to do this more often, but who has the time for it?

It’s always hard to justify time away from work with deadlines looming and hundreds of unread messages filling each and every inbox on a daily basis. One day away from work feels like it sets me back at least a week in today’s fast-moving society. Everyone knows how easy communication is, and a fast reply is almost expected nowadays. If I don’t reply to a text, I get an email. If I don’t reply to the email, it’s a PM on Facebook. No luck there? Let’s try Instagram, both personal account and business account. I often get five to six messages from a single person about a single topic, over multiple platforms, in the span of just a few hours. It literally happens all the time. And it’s hard to keep up!

The value of personal time and privacy is still important in this wild world we are living in, but how do you communicate that without sounding conceited or disrespectful? How do you ignore phone calls to get work done without people taking it personally? These are the challenges we face today, and it’s only going to get worse. So, buckle up and accept the fact that 2021 will bring a whole new set of challenges—and probably a few more options for direct communication. Life is not a race to the finish line; it is a Sunday drive through the countryside in a super cool cruiser. So, let’s do our absolute best to work with everyone in this amazing industry as we continue to drive through the upcoming years. But you can bet that we will be stopping to smell the roses on occasion, so be cool and let’s ride out together!

Melting welding wire with CJ taught me a solid lesson about the world outside of our custom truck bubble, and the time spent will only make me stronger. Feeling the same pressure with your day-today? Take my recommendation— call a non-truck buddy and do some non-truck activities for a day. The feeling is unnatural at first, but it’s amazing by the time the day is done.