The Slow Burn: The Gift I Didn’t Know I Needed

The excitement was killing me.

It was Christmas morning, 1992, and I was awake before anyone else. Wide-eyed. Wired. Ready.
Although my grandma and I lived alone, my uncles were in town for the holiday. Two uncles, a cousin, one girlfriend-of-the-moment… and a dog.

His name was Muffin.

A miniature poodle. White. Fluffy. Pom-poms. Bows.
The least masculine dog you’ve ever seen.

I refused to be seen in public with him, lest I get jumped for having what looked like a walking cotton ball on a leash. And yet, memory unlocked, I can still smell the time he ran through a field of cows, rolled in manure, and I had to hose him off behind my mom’s trailer while trying not to throw up.

Anyway… Christmas.

I wasn’t supposed to get out of bed until an adult came and got me. Christmas Eve rules were strict. No wandering near the living room. No peeking. No catching Santa mid-operation.

But time moved slowly. Painfully slow.

So I did what any kid would do. I crept down the hall like a church mouse. Around the corner. Holding my breath.

And there it was.

Glowing in the reflection of Christmas tree lights….a 1989 wine-red Tama Imperialstar drum kit. Full setup. Hardware. Cymbals. Throne. Ready to rock. It was a popular, affordable drum kit known for its poplar shells, offering a full, warm tone, often coming as a complete "ready-to-rock" package with hardware, Meinl cymbals, and a throne, featuring durable hardware, Omni-Sphere tom holders, and modern Accu-Tune hoops for easier tuning.

FREAKING SWEET!

It was the only thing I’d ever wanted.
And somehow… something I didn’t even know I needed.

Drums are arguably the loudest instrument on earth, and yet I was on a stealth mission. They were calling to me, “Please beat me,” but I managed to sneak back to my room unseen.

Sitting on the floor with Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joes, I staged a concert.
Splinter on vocals.
Donatello and Leonardo on guitar and bass.
And on drums?

Snake Eyes.

Holding two swords like drumsticks.

Both my uncles were musicians. My birth mom could sing. I had an aunt who would go on to play for the San Francisco Symphony. Music ran in the family, even if I didn’t fully understand it yet.

Before the drum kit, all I had was Hot Cross Buns on the recorder. But the drums weren’t a curveball. I’d already been terrorizing pots and pans outside the garage while my uncle’s band practiced. I gave that cookware hell.

Finally, my Uncle John knocked on the door.

“Josh, you awake?!”

I nearly tore the door off its hinges.

“Let’s go see what Santa brought.”

Now, I already knew…but I had to play it cool.

I walked into the living room like I’d never seen anything so glorious. Uncle John told me he’d put in a good word with Santa. And I believed him. Fully. This was the most over-the-top gift imaginable.

I hadn’t even asked for a drum set.

Yet there it was.

Everything I wanted.
Everything I didn’t know I needed.

The rest of Christmas is a blur. I don’t remember who got what. I don’t remember dinner. I don’t remember which girlfriend was there.

I do know one thing, though.

That drum set changed the trajectory of my life.

A lot of kids pick things up and put them down. I didn’t. Drums stuck. Probably helped that Grandma was half deaf, otherwise there’s no way that kit would’ve survived.

By middle school, I learned you could get girls by being a musician.
By college, I learned you could see the country.
By my twenties, I learned you could even make a living creating art.

Life revolved around music from age nine to twenty-four. Stage lights. Applause. Long nights. Cheap meals. A lot of fun.

Eventually, ambition outweighed ability. Peanut butter sandwiches got old. I came home to chase another version of the American Dream.

But those drums?
They were exactly what I needed at the time.

As a kid, I was scrappy. Detentions stacked up. I wasn’t mean…I just stood up for myself. Being the chubby kid meant catching flak. I couldn’t throw a great punch, but I learned Swiss Army triplets real fast.

Drums gave me confidence.

I beat the skins until they broke. Then did it again. I learned the fundamentals: time, groove, restraint. And later, that lesson paid off.

A drummer who plays in time is a drummer who gets paid.

Looking back, this is a long way of saying something simple:

You never know which gift will shape your life.

As Christmas approaches, many of us celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ…in my humble opinion, the greatest gift ever given.

Some gifts show up wrapped in paper.
Some show up wrapped in purpose.
And some, like that drum kit, don’t reveal their meaning until years later.

And sometimes, the things we didn’t ask for end up becoming the things that carry us through life.


What I didn’t understand at nine years old, standing barefoot in the living room, staring at that cabernet drum kit, was that the gift wasn’t the drums.

The gift was time.

Time spent alone learning how things work.
Time spent failing in private before ever succeeding in public.
Time spent listening before being heard.

At first, drums were chaos. Noise. Energy with nowhere to go. I hit everything as hard as I could, because that’s what made sense. Louder felt better. Faster felt impressive. I thought that if I could just do more, it would mean something.

But drums don’t reward brute force for very long.

They reward restraint.

You learn pretty quickly that if you don’t tune them, they fight back. If you don’t respect timing, everything falls apart. If you rush, the song suffers. And if you don’t listen to your fellow musicians, to the room, to the space between notes, you get replaced.

That lesson followed me into adulthood, long after the stages got bigger and the gear got nicer.


Somewhere between my teenage years and my twenties, I learned something that stuck:

The most important part of a groove isn’t what you hit.
It’s what you don’t.

The space. The restraint. The discipline to sit in the pocket and let the song breathe.

That’s when music stopped being about me and started being about connection. When I realized the job wasn’t to impress, but to serve the moment.

I didn’t have language for it back then, but looking back now, I see it clearly.

That drum kit taught me how to wait.

How to sit with discomfort.
How to let repetition do its work.
How to trust that showing up, day after day, rep after rep, eventually changes you.

And that lesson? It applies to far more than music.

Years later, when cigars entered my life, something felt familiar.

Not the smoke.
Not the ritual.
But the pace.

A good cigar doesn’t rush you. It demands presence. If you puff too fast, it punishes you. If you ignore it, it goes out. If you don’t respect the leaf, the whole experience unravels.

Sound familiar?

Cigars, like music, are a craft that reveals itself slowly. You don’t get the full picture in the first third. You have to earn it. You have to listen. You have to let the thing unfold in its own time.

We live in a world obsessed with shortcuts. Instant gratification. Viral success. Overnight expertise.

But the things that last…the things that shape you….rarely arrive fast.

They arrive like that drum kit did. Quietly. Unexpectedly. With more responsibility than excitement at first.

They ask you to commit before you understand the payoff.

Brolo exists in that same space.

It’s not about chasing trends or cutting corners. It’s about honoring the long road. Respecting the craft. Understanding that real connection, whether through music, cigars, or community, is built slowly.

Like learning to play in time.
Like learning when not to hit.
Like learning to sit in the silence and trust that something meaningful is forming.

I didn’t know it then, but that Christmas morning gave me a framework for life.


Be patient.
Respect the process.
Listen more than you speak.
And trust that the things worth keeping take time to reveal themselves.

That’s the slow burn.