Hi. I’m Yusuf. A lawyer turned leather craftsman and founder of awarding winner leather goods label YUSSICO. Maybe you saw me on the internet. Maybe you saw me on Race Against the Tide. You found this page. You want to know more about me. Let me try.
How it started
Growing up in Leicester, I wasn’t presented with all too many options about what could be possible for me. Being generally good across the board academically didn’t help and I was corralled into medicine. That didn’t work out so I picked law because a lawyer gave a talk when I was at school. I arrived to London to read law at the London School of Economics and qualified as a solicitor. Working never really appealed to me. I resented giving my time away. The only true currency we have in this life is time and we don’t actually know how much each of us is apportioned. This dissatisfaction with the status-quo led me on a journey of discovery trying a gamut of creative pursuits until I found my calling with leatherworking.
How it’s going
After a decade on that path, chasing a dream to turn a passion into profit as a leather craftsman, I spent this past year in retreat because it no longer felt right. I was so caught up with the outcome I did not stop to ask myself if it indeed was my dream.
I realised that I have spent a lifetime performing a version of myself. A version that I could define to be understood by others; to make myself acceptable. In that process, I lost myself. To perform a version of the self that can be defined by others requires one to lie to the self. Paring oneself down to fit into categories that fit neatly into a box. To follow a path and pretend that it is all figured out.
In figuring out what’s next for me, I am of the conclusion now that I have no desire to define who I am and what I want. Dare I have the courage to show up and take action to live an audacious life without having what’s next figured out; to follow what feels right and what is in front of me now?
To define is to not truly and fully see who you are and what your life can be. Whatever I say will never be enough because I will be contorting myself into a box. You’ll never fully understand me because I’ll never be able to describe myself sufficiently.
I have never wanted to live a life that I could dream for myself; if I can imagine it and I can dream it, then it is already within the bounds of what I have seen and what I know. How boring! So far I have and, I want to continue to, live a life beyond what I can dream and imagine for myself. To do that requires walking repeatedly to the edge of oneself.
So maybe this tells you everything you need to know. Maybe it tells you nothing at all. If it piques your interest at all, then follow my socials and journey along.