My unpublished novel was stolen at the Forbes Under 30 Summit

When I opened the trunk of the car and didn’t see my worn out, black High Sierra backpack, my first thought was, “My book is gone.” I first had the idea to write a novel in August 2014. Let me backtrack by saying that writing was always my first love. Long before I ever wanted to start a company, I wanted to write a New York Times bestseller. I storyboarded an idea for a novel about four ambitious twenty-something journalists at the New York Times covering a fictitious 2016 Presidential Election, balancing their careers with their personal lives. [Note: in 2014, all my ideas about the 2016 election seemed so far-fetched. Compared to the real thing, they now seem incredibly tame.]

It took me about two years to finish writing the novel. Ironically enough, I titled the book Made in November. With the election nearing, I figured the best time to release the book would be just days before the election. I was working on the final touches of the book when I was invited to the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston.

Right around the time I started working on my book, about two years ago, I decided that I would live my life as if it were a movie. I don’t know where I read it, but someone once said, “the goal of your life should be to live the most interesting life possible.” I spent the first 19 years of my life living someone else’s movie. But in 2014, I just decided that from here on out, every decision I made, every creative project I took on, every person I brought into my life would be intentional. This was my cast of characters. If you were in my life, I wanted you to be in my movie.

Photo by Jack Cook

As months passed, I took more risks. I started being more selfish. I worked on projects that I genuinely loved, even if they didn’t seem feasible to everyone else. The people I held close to me were the best people I had ever met. Imagine a movie with only your favorite actors and actresses in it. I surrounded myself with people that would not only come to my Christmas Party, but help me set up thirty minutes before it started.

When I got the invite to the Forbes Under 30 Summit, it took a few moments to process. This was a pivotal scene in my movie. Sure, I’d miss a few classes, but nobody wants to see a movie about a kid that had a perfect attendance record. I joined a few of my friends and we all headed down to Boston and we took that place by storm. The weekend was packed with surreal moments, straight out of a movie.

We interviewed billionaire, Richard Branson, at a private lunch in a closed off dining room. We networked with the future changemakers of our generation. We told our stories. We made our marks. We were writing the scenes of our movie. On the last day of the conference, we headed to our car to grab our stuff and head home. I opened the trunk and my bag was gone.

I lived in my backpack. I always have my laptop and camera with me. But the scene in the movie where the audience drops their jaw in disbelief was when I realized my hard drives were gone. The last six years of my life were locked in that 4 terabyte hard drive. Photos of my friends and I. My business documents and game plans. Videos of my baby sister growing up. And the last 19 chapters of my novel.

My body went numb. My face burned in anger. I couldn’t have lost everything. This wasn’t in the movie. Everything was going perfectly. The book was going to come out in just a few weeks. In the movie, it would somehow manage its way onto the New York Times bestseller and skyrocket to the top. In the movie, JK Rowling would happen upon a copy of my book, absolutely devour it and tweet me how much she loved it. In my movie, I didn’t lose everything.

It took me standing in that parking garage, with all of my work taken away from me, to realize that unlike movies made in Hollywood, our scripts aren’t written first. We live the movies we make for ourselves. My cast of characters remained unchanged. I was surrounded by love at the conference. I was surrounded by loyal support. We sat in that police station talking about our blessings, not our burdens. We laughed about the memories of our interview with Richard Branson, not our anger.

We lost laptops, hard drives, cameras and invaluable intellectual property and creative works in progress. That weekend has now become a moment in my life, with nothing but one blurry Snapchat to “show for it.” I shared that moment with people I adore. It took me losing everything I owned to realize that the most irreplaceable part of my life were the moments that made it up.

Photo by Jack Cook

I live my life like a movie. I’ll continue to take risks. I’ll continue to add new characters to my story. The conference was a blessing, not an obstacle. Nobody wants to see a film where everything goes right. This isn’t the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the comeback.

Keep watching. This movie is about to get very, very good.