I missed my calling, or perhaps it hasn’t come yet, but there is no way I was put on this earth to do what I currently do for a living. My “career,” if you can call it that, is a result of the snowball effect—BA, Useless + Skills, Marketable + Experience, Relevant gaining momentum and barreling down a 40-year-long slope towards Retirement, Preferably Early and Accomplishments, Hopefully Meaningful. I started out with idealistic intentions. My first job out of college was with the trade association of the book publishing industry in New York. I was going to break into publishing. Instead I broke into spewing creative bullshit, which was a natural lead-in to professional services marketing. My knowledge of the particular services I marketed led me to where I am today, on the side of the practitioner rather than the provider. Is that vague enough? Basically, I am on a strange diagonal path.
Some kids know from a young age that they want to be a veterinarian or a teacher or a human capital consultant (ha) when they grow up. Not me. When I was young, the only things I wanted to do were draw and write.* I was born with major artistic talent and I haven’t done a damn thing in my adult years to cultivate it. In childhood that’s all I did. I won drawing contests, became the cartoonist for my high school paper, illustrated a good portion of my yearbook, and wrote and illustrated a children’s book in college. I loved being in art class and experimenting with a new medium like sculpture, watercolors or airbrushing. But mostly I loved to sketch. I have a portfolio of my old sketches, a time capsule of 1991-1995. When I went to college I stopped keeping a sketchbook, which is a shame because I had abundant free time and incredible beauty just outside my door. I guess I had better things to do, like drinking Mad Dog 20/20 and fingering people on Unix.**
I also wrote a novel when I was twelve. I found it in the closet of my old room the other day. It takes up 6 single-subject notebooks and it’s about a teenage female pop quintet and their zany and romantic adventures on tour with the New Kids on the Block. The title is Starstruck. The main character’s name is Tiffany Mancuso, which I thought was the most glamorous name in the universe, next to Samantha Micelli. The group’s name is—wait for it—the Inner City Kids.*** The story itself is horrible; you don’t even need to wonder. It’s so, so bad. SO bad, in fact, that I need to immortalize it here. That way we can all cringe together.
* So why did I not become an editor, illustrator or graphic designer? Fuck if I know.
** Heh.
*** Even though the girls came from a white-bread suburb and practiced in a state-of-the-art recording studio in Tiffany’s house. She didn’t even have to ask her parents whether it was okay to quit school and go on tour.
Some kids know from a young age that they want to be a veterinarian or a teacher or a human capital consultant (ha) when they grow up. Not me. When I was young, the only things I wanted to do were draw and write.* I was born with major artistic talent and I haven’t done a damn thing in my adult years to cultivate it. In childhood that’s all I did. I won drawing contests, became the cartoonist for my high school paper, illustrated a good portion of my yearbook, and wrote and illustrated a children’s book in college. I loved being in art class and experimenting with a new medium like sculpture, watercolors or airbrushing. But mostly I loved to sketch. I have a portfolio of my old sketches, a time capsule of 1991-1995. When I went to college I stopped keeping a sketchbook, which is a shame because I had abundant free time and incredible beauty just outside my door. I guess I had better things to do, like drinking Mad Dog 20/20 and fingering people on Unix.**
I also wrote a novel when I was twelve. I found it in the closet of my old room the other day. It takes up 6 single-subject notebooks and it’s about a teenage female pop quintet and their zany and romantic adventures on tour with the New Kids on the Block. The title is Starstruck. The main character’s name is Tiffany Mancuso, which I thought was the most glamorous name in the universe, next to Samantha Micelli. The group’s name is—wait for it—the Inner City Kids.*** The story itself is horrible; you don’t even need to wonder. It’s so, so bad. SO bad, in fact, that I need to immortalize it here. That way we can all cringe together.
* So why did I not become an editor, illustrator or graphic designer? Fuck if I know.
** Heh.
*** Even though the girls came from a white-bread suburb and practiced in a state-of-the-art recording studio in Tiffany’s house. She didn’t even have to ask her parents whether it was okay to quit school and go on tour.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home