In high school Mrs. Darby, my art teacher, saw something in me that I just didn’t see, I guess. She told me I should go to college for art. Any kind of art.
What’s a young teenager about to graduate high school supposed to do about college?
Listen to my art teacher, of course.
And so I did. My long relationship with coffee began that year as I prepped a portfolio of 40 different pieces of art for my interview with the Fashion Institute of Technology, which apparently educates students on more than just fashion. Weeks later, I get an acceptance letter and off to the races! Seventeen-year-old me in the Big Apple, going to college. Woop woop!
That lasted one year. I didn’t have a form to prove residency although I lived in New York since 1994. I couldn’t continue school, which in retrospect was due to being wildly misinformed. I can’t believe that high school doesn’t prep our youth for these crucial processes we’ll encounter after graduation. I got a regular job at a factory, then started working as a salesman, got back into college with night classes for architecture, then quit it all for the Air Force and eventually I ended up in Japan for three years.
What a ride! Occasionally, I would pick up a pen or pencil, I preferred pens. It never lasted. I was young and distracted by the streets a.k.a. Japanese bars and such. In 2020, as the world met Covid-19, and teleworking took us all by storm, I sat at home looking at all my artwork and unfinished projects over the years.
That’s when it hit me. I should do this. Suck this shit up and go.
So I did.
I began to get focused using skills I learned from Atomic Habits, a book by James clear, and created a timeline for when I would complete my first book. It took many months to make this happen. I thought writing and illustrating a kid’s book would be easy. I was dead wrong. It’s incredibly hard.
Eventually, I did it. And that’s what it’s about! Sure I have other reasons like I want my son to know he can also do it. I want to leave something that can inspire him.
Finishing it, however, was the goal. To finish something.
The value in finishing something you set your mind to is hard to quantify. When I finished my book and received it in the mail I felt an incredible sense of victory. A victory over the negative thoughts, the doubts, the lack of motivation, and the issues with time management. It all came to a crossroads. And there I was, in my kitchen looking down at this small book I spent a year working on.
And you know what? Im damn proud of my little book because I finished it.
Buy it here…