We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sep Alwin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Sep, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
My roots are planted on a small horse farm in rural Wisconsin where my lifetime of resilience was born. From a young age, I watched my parents return everyday to their social work jobs without complaint, careers riddled with stress and burnout. Yet with often little energy, time, or money, they always showed up. They always put us four boys first. They never quit. Years later when pursing personal interests in community corrections, international humanitarian work, and most recently intensive care nursing, I found the resilience came naturally. Like most caregivers, my parents didn’t seek out reasons to stay in hard jobs helping people society often turns it’s back on. Rather, they understood these were jobs that needed to be done. As ultra runner Scott Jurek answers those who ask why he runs such ridiculously long distances, he often quotes his father when asked by a young Jurek for reasons for doing hard or unfavorable tasks: “sometimes you just do things”.
When my dad fell ill in 2018 with an aggressive, terminal cancer, I cared for him without hesitation. The same was true for my brother when his cancer returned later that year. When COVID breached our hospital doors, I was one of the first to step into our COVID ICU, albeit terrified and unprepared for what was to come. And weeks after my brother’s passing in 2020, I became a father in the middle of a global pandemic. None of these experiences were easy, and they have profoundly shaped the course of my life. Yet through it all, abandoning my role was never considered. I believe it was the example my parents set all those years ago that resulted in my steadfast ability to push on, to persevere when everything was screaming for me to stop. When you remove the burden of ‘why’ when doing something hard and instead understand that sometimes we must do things simply because they need to be done, tasks become exponentially easier to complete. This is not so say there won’t be hardship, pain, or struggle; it’s to say through it all, you’ll have a much greater shot at remaining resolute and unswerving.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
After nearly 15 years in helping professions, my wife and I decided to take a step back in effort to slow our lives down. With a two-year-old growing bigger daily, we didn’t want careers to pull us away from the time we knew we’d never get back. Further, we didn’t want challenging and difficult jobs further affecting our wellbeing, causing an inability to be our best selves for our daughter or each other as newer parents. A weekend with good friends filled with meaningful conversations lead to a very motivating three hour car ride home, and it was during that drive we decided to open Object, a homewares shop we’d been hypothetically planning since getting married in 2014.
We opened our doors less than three months later after a total buildout of a small retail space done entirely ourselves, and I recall feeling such an instant connection to our new venture. It was as if 15 years of creativity and passion was set free after years of suppression by high-stress roles fulled with heartache, fatigue, and trauma. We’ve now been open for 14 months, and the support of our community and their demand for quality, beautiful, and time-honored goods continues to drive our mission to introduce more people to slow, purposeful living with homes that serve as an oasis to our demanding lives. Today, our 450 square foot shop offers a finely curated, intimate collection of kitchen wares, home utility items, thought provoking books, original antique European artwork, organic teas, passive children’s toys, and more, always focusing on ethically made, sustainable goods.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. My dad used to play records every morning before school, and it was all the greats: Dylan, Guthrie, Elton, the Stones – this list goes on. In his song Father and Son, Cat Stevens sings the line “from the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen” and it has always stuck with me. To obtain knowledge, we must first be willing and able to listen.
2. Knowledge takes time. If this world is anything today, it’s quick. We streamline everything. The quest for efficiency and time-saving is relentless. So it’s no wonder we feel the need to master a new skill or pursuit with ease and quickness. Yet anyone who has tried something new knows this isn’t the case. Rather, knowledge is a commodity that’s only earned through patience.
3. We can’t learn or grow if we cannot allow our long-held beliefs and opinions to be challenged. We all have the ability to obtain knowledge and improve our proficiency, but this can only be realized through a willingness for change, a bit of humility, and compassion for ourselves when proven wrong.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
We’re fortunate to curate a shop that truly caters to everyone in our community. We all can benefit from purchasing sustainable, quality wares for our lives and homes. The benefits of creating a slower lifestyle are well-known, and they don’t discriminate on the basis of age, background, or beliefs. Our ideal client remains every person who walks through our front door, someone seeking a positive change in their wellbeing and personal journey. Both personally and through our clients, we’ve found it’s often the small, seemingly insignificant things that lead to great change. That one book on mindfulness that starts a lifetime of meditation. An antique painting that sparks newfound creativity. A dust broom that leads to a clean, organized home. Our shop is full of such objects, and that’s the beauty of what we do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.objecthomewares.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/objecthomewares/
- Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/objecthomewares/
Image Credits
All images are our own, created in our shop/home.
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
