My birthday in 2005. The following year I would decide to be an artist.

In 2o06, shortly before my 18th birthday, I had a monumental week. With typical teenage audacity, I decided to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

Within a week.

I spent the week writing lists. Pros/cons. Writing about what I wanted in life. Sitting around thinking. Taking walks.

And eventually came down to a few distinct choices.

Programmer. I could make games for a living. I wasn’t a prodigy, but I was a fairly adept programmer for my age. Graphic designer. I took design classes at the community college as well and had picked it up extremely quickly. I had even freelanced a little. Carpenter. My dad builds houses for a living, and it was always an option (and, I suppose, sort of still is) for me to take over the company. Artist.

Obviously we all know what I picked.

The reason I decided to become an artist has nothing to do with what would make me the most money, or what I was “talented” at, or even what I necessarily always enjoyed the most. It was simply something that, in my gut, I just knew was the right choice. Without anything better to go on, that’s what I relied on.

From this moment, the fear began. I have spent every day since, with some variance, utterly terrified of failing. Of not being good enough. Not making enough money to support myself. Being a horrible, embarrassing failure.

And it was this fear that propelled me to improve.

My first decision was where to go to art school. Incidentally, no one had told me not to go to art school at the time, so I started researching schools. I figured if I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right. So I looked up rankings and after tons and tons of research decided the Rhode Island School of Design was where I wanted to go.