The Lion in the Sun
Between the comfort of now and the call of what’s next.
If I were an animal in a zoo, I imagine I’d probably look a bit like the lion who’s perched on the high point of my cage bathing in the sun. It’s a pretty peaceful existence—zookeepers feed me, bathe me, scratch my neck, and occasionally I scare the kids.
Yet every so often, I catch a scent I can’t quite place. It comes in on the wind and makes my ears perk. A flicker of instinct, of something older and wilder. I don’t even know if it’s real or just muscle memory. But I feel it in my teeth, in the pads of my paws. The walls feel closer. I stand up. I pace. I start thinking about what it would take to get out.
That’s sort of how I feel about the restaurants right now.
We’ve built something beautiful. Two locations, amazing teams, real community. People trust us. They celebrate anniversaries with us. They bring their kids in after soccer games. Our regulars know Russ by name and, in some cases, more than they know ours. This is the dream, right? The thing I worked for, bled for, bet on.
And yet—I still feel that flicker. That need for more. For next. For else.
I’ve been trying to sit with that without immediately needing to fix it. Trying to let the tension exist. The contentment and the craving. The lion in the sun and the lion at the gate.
Here’s where it gets tricky. I’ve been around long enough to know that success requires focus. I didn’t get here by chasing everything that lit me up. I had to be obsessive, disciplined, probably even a little unhealthy about it at times. That’s the nature of building something real—you narrow in and block out the noise.
So then when the other desires creep in—the ones that have always been there, like my love of filmmaking, especially documentaries—I start to wonder: Can you really do more than one thing well?
And underneath that: What if I’m not allowed to? What if the cost of saying yes to more is losing what I’ve already built?
That’s the loop I get stuck in. The voice that says: Pick one thing, or pick failure.
It’s a limiting belief dressed up as wisdom.
I’m trying to challenge that now. Or at least, interrogate it. Is it really true that we can’t be good at more than one thing? Or is that just fear masquerading as discipline?
I don’t have a clean answer yet. But I know this much: the part of me that wants to make films isn’t going away. It’s not a phase. It’s not a distraction. It’s something real and old and deeply mine. And maybe the question isn’t “How do I focus on everything?” but rather, “How do I let the right things take turns in the front seat?”
The truth is, I’ve always wanted to make films. But the restaurant life is so daily. It consumes your attention. There’s always a fire to put out—literally and otherwise. And when the lights go off and you finally exhale, it’s hard to find the energy to stoke another flame.
Nonetheless, the flame is still there. Some days it’s a little ember. Some days it roars. I think I used to be afraid it would die if I didn’t feed it constantly. Now I know it won’t. It just waits. But it’s not patient.
I guess what I’m realizing is that there’s no amount of success in one lane that’s going to quiet that voice calling me toward another. That might sound ungrateful. I hope it doesn’t. I am grateful—beyond words. I just don’t think gratitude and desire are mutually exclusive. You can love the cage and still want the savannah.
So I’m trying to be honest with myself. About what I’ve built. About what I still want to build. I don’t know if I’ll ever find the perfect balance between those things, but I don’t think the point is balance anymore. I think it's movement. Forward, sideways, diagonally—just movement.
Maybe the lion doesn’t want to escape. Maybe he just wants to run.
Love,
Nick