It's not everyday you get to tell a story about one of your best friends... and an extremely inspirational one at that. As I rewind back to the summer of 2021, just before @LeeMelymick was about to venture off to his very first Paralympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, an idea of working on a project together was merely a simple conversation that was held on friday night over a couple beers. We wanted to create something, we just didn't know what that something was. Fast forward to August and myself and my close friends found ourselves in the same situation, except this time we were lucky enough to witness Lee and Team Canada compete in the Paralympic wheelchair basketball tournament on TV; we watched from afar in amazement as our boy represented our country with greatness! While absolutely giving it their all, Team Canada ended up placing 7th in the standings after several extremely close games and some unlucky bounces; I could tell Lee was unhappy with this result due to his competitive nature. As someone that understood Lee’s work ethic and strenuous schedule (try making plans with the guy lol), I sat back and tried to analyze the frustration that Lee must be feeling after not seeing the outcome that he wanted and that's when a lightbulb moment clicked in my head. With the winter Paralympics currently taking place (or any Olympic or Paralympic games for that matter) we always see a variety of heroic athletes placed on the pedestal of greatness. Going for gold, or the best possible result, a lot of the time we only focus on this “greatness”, but what we don't see is the stress, mental and physical strain, or more specifically, the internal dialogue related to competition or post-competition; I felt as if it was important to document this feeling. With that idea in mind we created “Everyday I Rise”. Special thanks to @adidasca @christian_sunday for the sponsorship and the @UndividedCreative and production team for all the support! As well, thank you Tracey Bowie and @ry.church for the location support.