I’m All In

Taking a shot on love

Vincent Van Patten
3 min readSep 10

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Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

My writing is nothing more than a chronicle of my emotion, an assemblage of scenes both painful and bright, exciting and mundane, stitched together with this thing called I as the thread.

I hope to convey how no story is more meaningful than the other; none more beautiful. They’re all beautiful to me.

A painful scene tells me I’m alive and that I’m human — a joyful one that I’m truly living.

But should anybody care about what moves me? I wonder. Why should they?

Because I know I’m not alone.

Because I’m a writer.

I’ve chosen to share in the hopes that what I experience and what you experience — whether on similar planes, timeframes or disparate dimensions — may find some commonality.

Maybe these words can help us both carry on.

Maybe they can help us both smile, no matter what we’re going through. In the words of writer Jorge Luis Borges:

“A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”

Thank you for filling a moment of your day with what I have to say.

I hope my stories illuminate the possibilities, the love, the meaning in this human experience, which is anything but simple. That wouldn’t be any fun.

Standing on the subway track awaiting the train to take me home. It’s a typical Wednesday night — the first day of the rest of my life.

I sense that there’s no room for half-measures in your life, one of my best friends texts me when I tell him what I’m about to do. He’s right.

I’m all in.

If there’s a chance at success I want to leap; if there’s an adventure to be had I want to step through the gate.

Not everyone will see life this way, and that’s okay.

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Vincent Van Patten

Exploring what lights my soul on fire ❤️‍🔥 Living in Japan. For my writing, podcast, photography and much more, check out vincentvanpatten.com