Heroes Go First , Then the rest follow (First half of 2020)

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Greetings my fellow friends,

Before I begin with my entry , I'd like to introduce myself to those who have the slightest clue of who I am. My name is Justin Reid and I am the sole operator of this brand Pickedfromdagarden. For those reading, I'm pretty shy and still have to get used to showing my face even in the modern day of social media. So I wont be surprised or offended by you asking yourself "Justin who ?? Who's that ?" To put it short, i'm just a graffiti kid who happened to expand canvases. Any who, I figured a lot of people would be nervous to just vent on some clothing site about the crazy year of 2020 and it's effect on their lives so I thought , "Why not go first?" So, here I am...

Personally , 2020 had several odd turns, but if I had to put a specific date on it, I'd say it all started with the tragic passing of Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant, and the other 7 passengers who were aboard the helicopter that crashed on January 26th. This was one of the few times in my life I cried over people I've never even met, but I guess heroes just have that affect on people. In my eyes, Kobe Bryant represented a strength that people needed but couldn't express through themselves without seeing him do it first. After he passed, I think some of the world just didn't know where to look for that same strength.

Then shortly after, 2020 didn't hesitate to follow up with more heart bending news. News flashes and social media took the world by storm announcing a new unique virus had emerged more lethal than anything we've seen yet. Not even a month went by before sending the WORLD , not just the United States, into quarantine. Changing life as we know it. Although , this turned out not to be a such a negative time for me. At first , the quarantining was ruining all of my plans to carry out Pickedfromdagarden. The pandemic shut down all of my business connections and in a New York minute I had to become 100% independent. If i'm being honest I was so scared and clueless on what to do.

The pressure was on. But trust me when I say from experience

, pressure only makes the game more interesting. It turned out to be a time I thought I could use my clothing brand to help the situation if I can work in-house. So with that being said I did my research on how I'd do all of this work and production by myself. I saved up some money and bought the most logical embroidery machine I could find. Once I did that I ran into another challenge. I had no idea how to use it LOL. Which to me is the beautiful thing about pressure, you make decisions not exactly knowing the outcome which personally forces me to learn.

With that being said , It only took me a week-two weeks tops to get the hang of it and I took it upon myself to make antibacterial masks the first product I would produce. One of the times I thought to myself Kobe would probably say "Not bad Justin .. Not bad at a l l ."