5PiECE

2025PIECE 👀

2024 has brought A LOT of major changes for me personally - including moving away from the city I’ve known and lived in my whole life to embrace a quieter, suburban experience with my favs and Piper 🐶

And soon, your boy 5PiECE is going to become an uncle 👶🏻 what a trip it is to know the next generation of your family is en route 🤯

I honestly feel like I still have so much to figure out personally and professionally - but I’m happy to have made progress and continue steering the course I set out on a decade ago 🚢

Sometimes I get caught up in thought patterns that are very competitive (I’m Italian-Canadian, what can I say, it’s in my blood 🤌🏼) but recently have been trying to remind myself that the only person I’m competing with is ME 😤

And compared to my past, I’ve made some incredible progress that I can only appreciate now as I stop to smell the roses before the year comes to a close 📆

I’m happy to have been a part of some awe-inspiring musical projects this year - including some awesome ones from and many more 🚀

And this has probably been the hardest I’ve gone on YouTube for awhile - dropping multiple videos per month for most of the year and becoming invigorated to continue making content, learning and hopefully helping other creators a long the way 🤘🏻

Huge shoutout to for their on-going sponsorship of my channel as it’s been a massive help, enabling me to dedicate more time to YouTube than ever before as well 🙏🏼

I thank you for rocking with me. If you’re seeing this, happy new years to you and yours and hope we can make 2025PIECE even better than 2024. As long as you’re still breathing, you can 🎯

Peace!

-5

A key difference I notice whenever I go Europe is people seem to work to live, whereas in the west, we live to work 😓

Work becomes everything to us. It consumes us. It’s very clear, as most times when you meet someone, one of the first questions they’ll ask is: “so what do you do for work?” 🧐

God forbid you don’t have a good answer to that question, especially when you do multiple things like I do - audio engineer, producer, content creator, grant writer and so on 😅

For a long time, I used to subscribe to the following idea: “Better busy than bored” 📆

But lately I’ve come to realize that being busy is not necessarily a good thing. and many good things can come from boredom 🎯

Afterall, if you’re always busy, then when do you find time to make your biggest breakthroughs? 🤨

It CAN’T happen when you’re multitasking and juggling your obligations, pressed to meet a deadline 🙅🏻

For me, it typically happens in my down-time when I actually have space and time to contemplate - like when I’m in the shower and can think clearly for 10 minutes without distraction 💭

Being busy can often put you into a REACTIVE state - processing what’s immediately in front of you and not being thoughtful or intentional with your actions ☢️

But being thoughtful in advance - utilizing boredom or even scheduling in time to think can help you escape that reality and become PROACTIVE. You can decide what you want to do, when you want to do it and have more control over what happens next. 🔍

As Idowu Koynikan said: “You just can’t let life happen to you, you have to make life happen.” ✅

Making life happen means becoming proactive 👀

Love or hate Bill Gates he would routinely take “think weeks” - times he would schedule in advance to do nothing but go away off-grid, with no communication to just read, learn and think about the next moves for himself and his businesses 🧠

While I don’t always agree with what he does professionally, I can’t help but think that this is partly what has contributed to his financial success over the past few decades 📈

Imagine what a little bit of forced boredom could do for you? 🤔

The internet is NOT a real place ❌

In fact, a lot of “places” aren’t real 🤨

Coming back from another trip across the pond, being completely detached for a brief reprieve, I can’t help but contemplate what “reality” actually is 🔍

It’s all in your mind 🧠 it’s YOUR version of reality as you know it and have defined it 📝

Perhaps you can relate but for instance, at home in Toronto, I can at times feel overwhelmed by the varying stressors of life…😖

Responsibilities and obligations - bills, maintaining a household, keeping up with the daily demands of life, work and the social constructs of being in a city and putting yourself out there 🌆

And then when I travel, I am able to briefly detach from all of these and be “free” 🦅 immersed in a new environment, new people and completely living in the moment not glued to my phone or computer 📲

I’m NOT naive enough to believe both are reality 👀

Life at home isn’t as stressful as I think it is - how I’m thinking about it is. And I realize that ESPECIALLY after coming back decompressed, refreshed and ready to embrace my former challenges and turn them into progress 📈

And life abroad isn’t as carefree as I think - I still encounter problems and challenges, as****es and other things - just viewed with a different lens 👓

I know if I stayed somewhere else long enough, I’d be trading my old problems for a variety of new ones to unique to my surroundings 🌴

What I’m getting at is: perception is everything. What you think, you become. Reality is what you make it. (These are not my quotes but ones I’ve lifted and can’t properly attribute at the moment)🔨

Sometimes we need to escape our current reality to get the perspective needed to approach life a different way ⬅️

A vacation is a “simple” way to do it, but I get that not everyone is as fortunate to travel. But finding a way to shift your paradigm and do something outside of your comfort zone and requires you to live in the moment is usually the recipe 🧑‍🍳

As my lovely partner has shown me, “a comfort zone is a beautiful place but nothing ever grows there” 💐