What Could Have Been
I have always had a passion for design.
I have flat-out refused my mother’s help dressing me for as long as I can remember. I was literally still a baby when I started picking my own clothes. I have been fanatical about shoes since I was three-ish.
As a kid I drew all the time, and I thought I would be some kind artist when I grew up.
When I was 12 or so I learnt the basics of Photoshop, and I would create cool signature pictures for people on forums.
My big sister is amazing at drawing things. My dad’s good too. My grandfather was an actual painter. He was really good. I’m still undecided about genetics. Everyone on my father’s side (all my siblings are half-siblings) is pretty good at drawing. And all of us are fucking crazy about chocolate.
Also around age 10 to 12-ish, I was probably one of the top 50 people in the world at animating stickfigures. I had an enormous fanbase in Brazil, for some reason.
In school I got top grades in art class.
Later I went to design school. I dropped out after two months, but still. (I found out that the entire semester’s course was basically ripped from a single website online. I could learn all the same stuff in an afternoon. Seemed like an unproductive use of time. And most teachers annoy me to no end. And they all loved me, for whatever reason, which made them more annoying. Anyway...)
When I was 13 I started learning about online business and marketing. Sort of. (I didn’t catch on to what any of this stuff was really about until I was 16+...)
And it seems logical I would go into web design. That’s what I thought I would be.
I got the eye for design, but I have no real practical web skills. I just never got into learning it.
If I knew PHP, I am fairly certain I would be one of the top Wordpress theme-makers in the world.
If I actually had a good understanding of the “tech stuff” when it comes to the interwebs, I would be one of the best web designers in the world.
But I’m not. It just didn’t work out that way. That might change one day, but that’s not the direction I went.
Instead, I learned how to sell. It made more sense from a money perspective. The fundamental purpose of business is to provide some kind of value to some person who finds it valuable, in exchange for some kind of currency. In other words, selling.
I sort of went off the deep end and bloomed into a full-fledged copywriting fanatic Deluxe.
A lot of times, there is an obvious way for things to happen.
But that’s not always what happens. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I also might say that if I had stuck to it, I could have been one of the world’s greatest football goalkeepers. No shit. (But that's a whole other story)
I wasn’t a born salesman. But I’m having a lot of fun diving into sales psychology... and constructing carefully-woven presentations that trigger people to whip their credit cards out.
I wasn’t a born writer. I didn’t discover writing until I was 16. That’s less than three years ago. But it sure as hell feels like some kind of a calling.
I’m good at it, and rarely do things feel as “right” inside as when I’m sitting down to write. Sometimes it’s tough getting started. But when I get going, all is right in the world.
I’m not even sure there is a point to this post. I just felt like writing something.
I’m probably just a complete moron for not exploiting my artsy side and running like hell with it.
Oh, well.