I was waiting tables at a restaurant in downtown Tulsa the first time I met Sydney Lee.

I had just started working at a sushi restaurant well-known for it's Hello Kitty inspired drinks and fortune cookies that promised sake shots to those who could beat their server in a game of rock paper scissors.

     I had only been working there for about a week or so, when a girl with bright red lipstick and a movie star smile walked into the restaurant.

     She came in with another woman, and they waved to the bartender who I later found out was a longtime friend of hers.

Sitting at my table, I couldn't help but overhear that she had just come back to Tulsa from LA after a global pandemic had brought many of the world's new adults back home to wait out the storm. 

Like myself, Sydney was in the middle of a personal shift towards a new dream. 

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After talking for a bit, I mentioned that in my own life I had been trying really hard to trust the path, to put aside doubt, and to truly know that I have always been in the right place at the right time.

So far everything had always worked out.

I had many meaningful conversations during my time working downtown,  but the one with Sydney stood out because I felt like she could really make it. 

Fast forward to 2022, I met Sydney Lee for coffee in the Brady Arts District.

This time Sydney Lee was a full-time DJ  with many accomplishments under her belt.

As one of Tulsa's favorite DJ's, she had hundreds of fans in the area and her audience was about to start expanding even more because she had just headlined a show for Yung Gravy.

With this new platform Sydney Lee became a major voice for the people, speaking up against coercion and sexual assault alongside so many other important issues.
At one point, Sydney Lee might have thought this was making it, and I would agree,

but on the constant grind of creating the life she pursues,

Sydney Lee has much more to show the world.
“Have you ever read The Alchemist?”
Today I picked up a copy from the library and flipped it open to the first page.

Listening to a tape from the sunny coffee shop where I interviewed her,

I write down Sydney Lee's favorite quote from the book,

“When you truly desire something and you put the work in, the whole universe conspires to make it happen”.

I have thought about that quote a lot since she told me it about it and what that must mean about Sydney Lee.

It seems that, like Sydney, we may have to commit ourselves to pursuing the thing that we love to create the life we imagine.

With a pure heart and little bit of trust in the process,

the universe might just conspire to give us exactly the life we have been dreaming of.