We recently connected with Nicholas Truscelli and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Nicholas, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
Every aspect of my life whether it be my music, skateboarding, or trying to become a pararescueman/operator revolves around taking risks, and learning from failure. At first it may sound a bit pessimistic considering you would expect “success” to follow up eventually after the “failure” portion of what I just mentioned. However, that sums up my whole athlete/creative/wanna be operator journey so far. The real truth is that I don’t have a career in what I love doing, I am not what you would consider financially successful with my endeavors. I have nothing to show for any of it in terms of financial success. What I do have to show for it is my personal grit, and willingness to fight for what I’m passionate about. To never allow failure or disbelievers to dictate my next move regardless of how hard it gets sometimes. When you truly love to do something you will do it regardless of the situation you are in. My everyday life consists of trying to make ends meet whether it be bartending, or taking on other jobs to make enough money to provide time for my creative outlets. Every day is a risk, every choice we make has a bit of risk involved. What will you do when the world tries to strip away the things you love most? That’s the real question.
Nicholas, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Long story short, the original dream started at 12 years old when I discovered my first skateboard, and from there I dedicated my life to reach a professional level. Not for money, but to prove to myself that I could do it, and to do what I loved everyday. Before skateboarding got as popular as it is now that dream was completely ridiculous to everyone I knew. I mean even with me typing it now at 35 years old it still sounds ridiculous even to me. You could imagine me dropping out of school at 17, and getting my GED to pursue the dream it had to sound like a horrible decision to most. They were right, I’m not sure it was worth it now as I am recovering from a recently broken humerus and a struggling financial situation. Around the same time frame I also discovered my love for creating music, and both contributed to the other as I realized my natural ability to create full songs from scratch. This became a slightly more practical route towards a chance at an income. However, it turns out this is just as big of a risk! What can I say, I was automatically hooked as most people are. Over time I began building my musical portfolio, and with time, patience, and technology improving it allowed me to get the music in stores and create my own website. From there I have consistently formed my own musical characters that represent the many different genres that I like to create. This led to me owning my own record label and turning it into what I call now SacredOakRecords. All of which is accessible on my website www.sacredoakrecords.com . Also it’s a bit random but a friend of mine is a great cartoon artist, and we are also collaborating on a childrens book that we are excited to release on my website in the future! With having 23 years of chasing these foolish dreams, working whatever jobs I have had to in order to keep them alive. I have reached a point in my life where I have put them to the side, and seek purpose out side of myself. I want to dedicate my efforts towards helping others and doing whatever it takes to be part of the protection of our country. The journey has led me to discover the possibility of trying out for pararescue and the many other amazing opportunities in the operator community. It has not gone so good thus far because of my broken arm, and medical waivers but this whole new chapter is dedicated towards pursuing some form of career bigger than myself. To be continued…..
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
I think most non-creatives wouldn’t understand the difficulty of navigating through this society with artistic visions that they can never understand themselves. To be surrounded by people who only understand follower counts, big bank accounts, and media propaganda demonstrating what they believe to be success from a creative standpoint. The amount of courage it takes to stay true to your vision, and to avoid being affected by the people who will doubt the ideas is incredible. This is where the term selling out comes in to play because how much suffering will you take before you decide to simplify your thoughts or ideas, and settle for what society likes to see. Or will you stay genuine through it all and be true to your craft even when no one shows support. This is a conflict in most creatives brains I would think, and it truly is courageous to remain genuine through everything.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Most recently I was pursuing my new dream of becoming a pararescueman, but I was disqualified for a heartburn condition the day after I broke my arm and had surgery. I spent a year training physically and mentally to be ready for the extremely difficult selection process, but the world kind of came crumbling down that day in the hospital. To be honest the pain from having my arm split in half was nowhere near the pain from not having the chance to tryout for pararescue any more. This has been a huge test of my resilience. I can stem my willingness to not giving up to my other endeavors the skateboarding dream itself and the music. The grit that I acquired from chasing after those things has kept me in work mode to get my arm back into shape, and I am not counting myself out. I went through physical therapy and now I am lifting weight again, swimming again and working as a bartender ready to keep pushing forward. I could let it defeat me and some days I feel like I should, but its not in my heart to give up. Never has been and never will be. Keep fighting for it until the end.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sacredoakrecords.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicktrees/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzKC3ppPcWoo5Ymvvm2G-QQ
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@treesydoesit
Image Credits
Nick Rubio, Ryan McGuire, Simon Gregerson, Nathaniel Penrod