Welcome

Thirty-two years in the making. How crazy/scary/cool/exciting/terrifying/awesome/nerve-wracking is that?

It’s taken 32 years for me to put these words down. Thirty-two years to come to the realization that excuses are meaningless words meant to hold you back from doing what you really want to.

I’ve always been a writer. My childhood bedroom was filled with notebooks, in all shapes and sizes. Many of them with only a few dozen pages scrawled with notes and stories, the rest of the lined pages left blank. I think back to those notebooks and realize they’re a lot like my “career” in writing. The first few pages packed full of stories and imagery, interesting tid-bits and things to remember. After that, it’s blank.

It’s those blank pages that have always left me wanting to fill them. I’d always wanted to be a professional writer. Attending college for journalism was never a question of maybe, it was always a given. The problem was that I never really knew what I wanted to write about most. My earliest memories of wanting to be a journalist were gleaned from massive stacks of Car & Driver and Automobile magazines, with DuPont Registries intertwined between them, that filled the floor of my closet. I couldn’t believe that it was someone’s job to fill their pages. Not only that, but to take the beautiful, gleaming, poster-like photos and tell their stories. I could never be that lucky to be one of those people.

So my writing, as many’s have, took a few twists and turns. I tried fashion writing after college, while living in New York City. It didn’t stick. I wrote obituaries and general features telling the lives of the residents of Northern New York. Progressing into business writing and entrepreneurship. That, I enjoyed. But it never really felt like…me.

Then, life took its biggest turn. I bought a restaurant.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

That’s right, my partner and I purchased a restaurant. The very restaurant I have worked in since I was 16. It’s a hustle, a pace that I crave. But here we are, seven years later, living that chapter of our lives to its fullest extent. Busy as ever, with little-to-no free time, oftentimes wondering what life without it would be like. The thing is, I’ve always felt like a missed out. Where would my life had gone if I’d continued trying to find myself on a writing path? Still writing about new businesses opening in small towns? Still interviewing CEOs of companies that are making their mark on our small portion of upstate New York? I wouldn’t know.

Until I decided to answer those questions on my own. Instead of taking the long and tireless road of self-discovery. I bit the bullet, took the road less traveled and started writing about what I realized I always wanted to: Cars.

It came to me a few months back. I’d been leaving work at the restaurant and taking my Camaro home via the longest, twisty-est roads I could find. I’d get texts of “Did you get lost?” from my partner when the five minute trip home took 30. I realized on those drives that the long road home was because I was looking for something more. I was enjoying that feeling behind the wheel. The excitement of being in my car, passing through the gears, taking corners quickly and without worry. I was in my happy place, and I wanted to explore that.

So here it is: KyleDrives. It’ll always be a work in progress. Although the good news is that it’s a space where I’ll be able to write about exactly what I want to write about. Mostly cars. New cars. My cars. Old cars and random thoughts about cars. Some news. Some personal stories and opinions. Maybe in the future it will advance into a more complete point of view, which I think I’d really like. But for now, it’s the realization of a dream.

Welcome.