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You're listening to StoryHelix: intertwining
stories past, present, and not yet
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imagined in Lane County, Oregon.
What's up earth things? I'm Leah Velez
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and I'll be your host.
The story we're about to hear was recorded
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at Oakshire Brewing Company in the Whiteaker
neighborhood of Eugene, Oregon, in early
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2022. Let's open up our ear nuggets and give it
a listen.
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I came to live
in Oregon by way of necessity. My
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wife and the mother of my youngest
child, she wanted to be around her
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family and she decided to go where home was, and home happened to be
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here and I came in tow and
I had my own reasons for coming, in
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addition too. Mainly to keep family together
as best as I could. And so
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I came out of necessity and I
stayed out of necessity. So yeah.
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I've really appreciated the journey
here, even though it was a little
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more prompted. The opportunities here really, I think,
benefited some endeavors and
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things that I've tried to do that
honestly, I don't know if I'd be
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able to do in my own hometown.
I think there's opportunity here amidst the struggle.
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So as far as opportunities to go, I think some things are really
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low barrier. Like you can still
do certain things with a handshake and access
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people. There's sometimes not the same
type of gatekeepers. They have their
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own but like, at least here, in some ways,
it's kind of good
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and bad. People are still fairly
cordial. So it's good in
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that sense that people are cordial,
but it's also a challenge too, navigating those
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different areas. Where, you
just might not know where you stand because
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people just might be a more accustomed
to being the polite. Like, I
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like a lot of things here,
but I really appreciate the DMV. You
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don't have to take a day off
work. There's no taco trucks outside,
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you know, no line zig-zagging
and three to four digit letters with the
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number. You don't have to take
a day off work. You just go
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in and they apologize to you for
from the wait of five minutes being so
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long. So I appreciate the accessibility
and some of the elements of a small
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town. Yeah, so pretty much
since my youngest was born I've been here
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on and off for about ten years
and I've been trying to call Eugene home.
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It's hard because, you know,
most of my family's in California and
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most most of my wife's families here.
So that's been the challenge. Moving
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here, not knowing anyone here,
having to network and get engaged in the
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community, to immerse myself in
it has been, it's been a challenge,
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but it's also created a lot of
opportunities and opened doors that I don't think
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...if I weren't in that situation,
I don't think I would have doggedly pursued
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them. A lot of the work
that I do stems from advocacy work that
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I got from a little bit of
popularity for some social media posts and things
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I was doing, involving food and
some fancy plating and it aroused a lot of
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people's curiosity and they're like,
"Oh, where is this guy from?"
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I wanted to take that curiosity and
turn it into advocacy. Take some
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of that following that I started developing
for something as small as cooking a really
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pretty meal and taking that and turning
it into something a little bit more meaningful.
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Not to say that cooking a beautiful
meal isn't meaningful. But it
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had more meaning to me because I
had to basically teach myself how to cook
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again, and so the plating and
the fancy stuff was pretty much borne out
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of at home rehabilitating myself, learning
how to cook again and an expression of
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gratitude. And so it meant a
lot to me how it was presented,
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because I had to start over.
So when I moved here, I got
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encouraged to join some online groups where people were cooking these amazing, gourmet-looking meals
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and they weren't in a fancy restaurant. It was just people at home,
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housewives and homemakers and just random people.
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You know, it was like "what, this is accessible?" Like,
I mean most of what I saw,
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I mean some of it looked like
it should have been in magazines and things
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like that. So it really inspired
me to do more and made it feel
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more accessible and I wanted to share
that with other people. So I had
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some health issues that required some emergency
treatment and procedures and surgery, and
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that was another reason
why I moved here during that time was
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to be cared for. I had
achalasia, it's swallowing disorder where
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the muscles stop coordinating in your throat
to pull the food down, and so
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I was a starving artist. And it
was really difficult to eat and drink,
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sometimes even water, and so that
was a struggle I came up here with
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and then I got diagnosed with another
rare condition called narcolepsy, and so it
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was like "Oh, man."
Like just something else on my plate
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that I had to deal with. I
had to get used to food again because,
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you know, it was an arduous
effort to even swallow sometimes. Every
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bite was like apprehensive because I didn't
know if it was going to get stuck
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or lodged in my throat, you
know, and even every drink. You
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know, it was a challenge.
I had to kind of learn how to
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cook again because with a sleeping disorder,
I was having a hard time staying
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awake and so it was like well,
what's going to keep me awake?
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What can I do? It can't
be too easy, can't be too hard.
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You know, I had to find
that balance and really get some
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of that muscle memory back and find
out what was going to work for me.
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It was a rough time, but
once I had the one surgery to
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help with the eating and drinking,
that helped, overall, the other elements.
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And so it was like okay, now I could function
a little bit more normally without the constraints
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of basically starving to death. So
that period of time where I was rehabilitating
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myself, it was from the surgery
and if... I told myself, I said,
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if I get some semblance of my
health back, I would do advocacy
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and give back to the community,
just kind of an expression and gratitude.
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So that's where a lot of my
external effort comes from, is just trying
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to give back as a way of
saying thank you to this town for basically
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saving my life. I started out
doing a bunch of volunteer work, but
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I was really inspired... some of
that inspiration came when I was catering for
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like the Rotary Club. I would
listen to their pitches, that the groups
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that would come in, a lot
of nonprofits, and I felt like,
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you know, this is really inspiring. I think I should create a
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nonprofit of my own instead of just
volunteering places. Maybe I can create something
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where I have a little bit of
creative licensing and can give back in my
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own way and support some causes that
are near and dear to me. And
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so I decided to start a nonprofit.
Suddenly Sleepy. It started out, I was
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curious of what it would take to put
on a 5k race. Since this is
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Track Town USA, I figured people
like racing, it'd be a good way to
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raise awareness around a cause and,
you know, inspired by like Susan G
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Komen and things like that,
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and so I said, well, I'd create my own race, and so
it was a sleepwalk. Suddenly Sleepy Sleep Walk.
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That was my contribution to
the city. That, I mean a lot
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of people like running, so I
hoped that it would fit and that people
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would embrace it. And you know, now it's we're going into year five
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and people seem to be coming along. A lot of it's about togetherness,
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you know, you got to create
interest. We advocate for a rare condition,
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so there just isn't a lot of
people. So we have to make
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it about sleep overall, the
importance of sleep to the community as a
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whole, not just a small,
narrow focus of a small part of the
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community. And by doing so, then
we can highlight a smaller part of the
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community and get people to care,
essentially because it impacts and affects them too,
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in ways that they might not realize.
And that hopefully they can empathize and
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relate. So people can learn what resources
are in the community, without having to be
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in crisis to do it. My
favorite part is the challenges each year and
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the adrenaline rush of like, oh
my gosh, how am I going to
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pull this off, what's going to
happen this year? What kind of barriers
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am I going to face? What's...
The first year we had immaculate weather.
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It was great and beautiful. The
second year, there was a freak snowstorm.
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Third Year, Covid. Fourth year,
Covid. Fifth year, still maybe some Covid.
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We had our event on Sunday, and
the whole world shut down on Monday.
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And so I wasn't, you know, I wasn't really aware of what
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was actually going on, because I was
in event planning mode. So there was
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a lot of unknowns and to get
back to reality on Monday, coming down
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from that high of, "Wow, we
pulled off another successful year, and bringing all
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these people together," to all the disconnectedness
that was starting to take place and all
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the fear. It was really challenging. A lot, a lot to process.
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Everything was kind of traumatizing, you
know, so trying to find a
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reason to laugh. When we did
the Stand-Up
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bars were just starting to open back up, and we were
trying to help businesses get a little bit
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more foot traffic and you know, help people
get a little bit more of a return
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to normalcy. And even the comedians
were rusty. I won't say names--
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a family member-- was like, "What?
What are you trying to do? Like
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you're doing too much." And I said, you know what, I'm going to
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put on an actual show, because
it started out, I was doing some open mic
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nights, and it wasn't just sleep themed
or anything like that, It was just funny
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stories. You know, a lot
of it was just based around funny things
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I could remember that people laughed at, that just happened to be my life.
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Laughter's the best medicine, they
say, so we were all just kind of healing together.
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Thanks for listening. You can find us wherever
you listen to your podcasts. If you've
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got your own Lane County story to tell,
we'd love to hear it, at StoryHelix.Wordcrafters.org.
