A few weeks ago, my friends Alli and Nicole, founders of Rauthenticity, interviewed me for their podcast. During our conversation, I shared with them I was heading to Los Angeles in a few weeks and they told me I had to connect with this guy, Zach Resnick, who founded Dreams Over Drinks – a project where he engages people in meaningful conversation over drinks and shares their stories.

Yesterday, I caught an Uber and met Zach over at Bar Nine, a coffeehouse in Culver City, Los Angeles. Upon meeting each other, Zach began recording our conversation. What stood out to me about him was the posture of learning he possessed.

Zach understands he can learn something from anybody, so he does what many of us are afraid to do. He approaches random people, people who are different from him, people with experiences unlike his and invites them to share their stories over drinks.

We ended up having an incredible conversation, chatting about our dreams, Car Window Poetry, and the power of words to impact people's lives. Today, Zach shared an excerpt from our conversation on Instagram. Check it out below:

"My dream is to create a space where people can not only create, but be encouraged in their creativity. 

I was recommended to check out this youth poetry organization called, Hear Here. I went to this poetry slam they were doing and it was the craziest experience. I ended up getting shuffled into this poetry workshop that was happening and a poet from New Mexico, Jessica Lopez, ran us through different prompts and one that stood out was to write about what your name means. She was like, 'You have five minutes, go!' As she said that I was like, 'What does my name mean? I'm the third in my family who had the same name, so is that what I write about? What does this look like?' It was right around the time of the Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings so I thought as a black man in this country and being someone who is on social media a lot; my name could be the next hashtag, so that's what I wrote about. 

You know, if I want to encourage kids to be bold enough to share then I need to be bold enough to share as well. I ended up sharing that night and I could really see how these words were touching people and impacting them in some way. Even sitting there and hearing middle school and high school kids get up and pour out this real pain and anguish of actual struggles they're going through, I was like, 'Oh shoot, words are super powerful.'

One day I got home from work and I don't know, there was just this desire tugging on my heart telling me I had to do something. I grabbed a notepad and started jotting down my passions. What excites me? What do I want to do? I know I want to give people a platform to create, I want people to feel encouraged in their creativity and I want it to be shareable. From there, I'm in these poetry communities and I remembered an idea from Taylor Tippett who does Words from the Window Seat. Encouraging words left on a plane window. I didn't want to steal her idea and do plane windows, but I could do car windows."

Follow along with Zach's stories and conversations here!

Much love.