To all my wonderful supporters,
I promised you all the story of the most interesting thing that happened in regards to my experience at The Blox, and now I finally have the words to tell this whirlwind of a tale - from heartbreak and healing, traveling across the country to film a reality show known as The Blox, love at first sight, and finally our next greatest venture together, here it is!
If you know me personally and/or have been following my recent blog posts, feel free to skip this paragraph. If you haven't at least read my recent blog post about The Blox, please do! It discusses in detail what I will summarize here for those of you who are stubborn and don't want to read it - The Blox is an entrepreneurship competition show that I had the honor of attending in February of 2023. I applied in September 2022 as my relationship with my son's father was falling apart, which all ended 2 days before my final interview to appear on The Blox. After scrambling to figure out where I was going to live, where I was going to work, and how I was going to survive, I completely ignored everyone in my life telling me not to go. I was a stay at home mom for 3 years, my business was operating in the negative, and I was absolutely out of my element.
As I was gathering information and trying to raise the money to go to The Blox, with everyone I knew telling me I shouldn't go, it was as if someone was whispering in my ear: "You have to go. You need to do this." I've never been one to ignore signs, and who am I to question the inner workings of The Universe anyways? So let me take you back to arriving in Kansas City, after my first interview. I changed for dinner and walked back into The Grid where everyone was waiting for dinner to start. I don't even really know what I was thinking or doing, I just remember walking inside with no goal, passing about 10 people, and then seeing HIM from across the room...
He was decked out in his branded apparel, deep in conversation with another Bloxer. His eyes glimmering under the fluorescent lights, his tattoos peaking out from under his hoodie, and a look that screamed to me "wow, he's either a player or [not into women]." In the millisecond that it took for me to take all of this in, he glanced up at me mid-sentence and gave me a mischievous grin while continuing his conversation. About 5 minutes later, the food was put out and everyone started to congregate around the buffet table while he and I were pulled to each other as if by magnets. We very briefly mentioned what our businesses were and had effortless conversation while making our plates and taking a seat next to each other. We talked throughout dinner, talked with the other Bloxers at our table, stood up, and that's when we both realized - "What's your name?" You guys, I'm not even kidding or being dramatic about this, we had gone about an hour and a half deep in conversation before realizing we never even introduced ourselves to each other! I paused for a second and told him, "oh, I'm Taysia!" He held out his hand and said, "I'm David."
As mentioned in my previous blog post, day 1 of competition was very hard on me (and my stomach). After pulling myself together and heading back into The Grid for the first Blox Off, I mentioned to David how I was feeling. He really helped ground me, telling me some breathing exercises to work through to calm my nerves, and that was when we started talking a bit about our personal lives. Almost every moment thereafter was spent either together or texting from across The Grid.
Something that The Blox doesn't show (understandably) is the "extracurriculars" we Bloxers participated in during the few nighttime hours that were not filmed. There happened to be a country line dancing type bar a few blocks away. Many of us decided to go there a few of the 6 nights that we were at The Blox. We all had so much fun dancing, taking embarrassing photos and videos of each other, and the MC at the bar made a shoutout to us. Locals started buying us drinks, and it was like getting to experience stardom on an extremely small scale.
At the same time, our conversations were getting a lot heavier. It was one of those typical "neither of us have been happy for a very long time, we're both going through similar hardships in life... but we're literally filming a reality show right now and we're never going to see each other again after a few days." Because of that last little caveat, it was very easy to just be ourselves around each other - we weren't trying to impress each other or pretend to be something we weren't. Every day during meals and breaks, we talked through the lessons and our business plans. Almost every night that we were there, we stayed up talking about everything and anything, and it was scary how easy it was for us both.
By the end of filming, we were practically inseparable. We had become instant best friends.
On the last morning, David and I happened to be scheduled to take the same shuttle to the airport. I will be first to admit that I was blubbering like a baby the entire way there. There was all of the emotion that I mentioned in my previous blog post, but I also felt like I had just handed a complete stranger my heart and told him to go ahead and take it back to Indiana with him while I go back to Idaho and we'll go on our merry ways, maybe like each other's posts on social media, and slowly stop talking over time. We arrived at his terminal first, where I got out of the van to give him one last hug goodbye. I got back into the van, and as the door slid closed, he never took his eyes off me. Even as the van pulled off, neither of us could bare to look away. I genuinely never thought I would see him again, and I was heartbroken.
But it wasn't the end.
Long story short, we have conquered the distance and the hardships that were determined to keep us apart. We continued to talk every single day after leaving The Blox, helping each other through some of the darkest months of each of our lives. Explaining what we actually had to do to be together would take a 7 book series and maybe an additional 3 movies to illustrate exactly how epic our story is. But I will say, he packed his life into his car, strapped his motorcycle to the back, and drove 2,000 miles to hand my heart back to me.
For the last year, we have been working together to expand each of our businesses and consolidate our lives into one. We have been helping each other with designs and business plans, I have been modeling for VoidRabbit while he has been making my content, on top of all the other advances each of our businesses have made. We continue to work together every day to grow in both life and business. Our story truly is a unique one, and we can't wait to see where the next chapter leads.
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