The Blinking Cursor Of Your Youth

Take yourself back to the age of 8 or 9.  If you’re like most, life and the world were wide open.  Everything was awesome, and meant to be explored.  You didn’t know what was behind that tree in the woods, or around that street corner.  But you knew that you wanted to know.

Life was a blinking cursor.  Like the one I’m staring at now, waiting for me to enter my thoughts.  Anything was possible.

But as each year went by, more things were revealed.  You started figuring things out, how the world works.  How people work.  Goodness, evil, facts and fiction.

It was a slow and steady journey for sure, crafted with your family and friends and those who surrounded you.  But at some point along the way you probably found less and less desire to look behind that tree, or around that street corner.

You now had a pretty good idea what was there.  Your memory and your experiences built up a library to reference.  You could now predict pretty well.  Things were ordered, for the most part.

And your life likely became ordered as well.  You now had a job, a chosen track in life.  Perhaps you chose the track you wanted, or maybe you stumbled upon it.  For those less lucky it might have been chosen for you, or forced upon you.  Or maybe still you lived in a place where there was no other choice.

Life just happened, and you are where you are now.  The good, the bad , and everything in between.

 

Is It Cool? Then Put It On The Page!

But let’s go back to that blinking cursor as an 8 year old.

That blinking cursor was like a loaded pistol, ready to go!  And you had tons of choices on where to point that cursor, how to arrange the letters to find things out.

You had passions, and interests.  You overturned rocks in the woods for hours just to see what bugs you’d find.  Maybe you climbed that tree to see what the view would be like at the top.

Each day was like an unwritten masterpiece.  If it’s cool and awesome, like that weird looking bug, then put it on the page.  Go in that direction!

But for most of us, so many of these things that brought us joy in life got shelved.  Forgotten.  Some passions were altered or just abandoned for lack of interest.  But others were marginalized or ignored because of responsibility, self-preservation, or the track of life.

 

What Stoked You?

As a child and through most of my schooling, I doodled.  I drew a lot.  I wasn’t even good at it, but I kind of liked it.  My Mom told me I had a natural talent like all Mother’s are obliged to do and constantly warned me that my talent would vanish if I didn’t use it.

Well, I didn’t use it too much.   But when I did my main source of doodling was sketching the Led Zeppelin or Van Halen logos in pencil on my notebooks during class.  Music was central to my life so that was logical to me.

Then for whatever reason I went through a period where I drew mazes.  Complicated, elaborate mazes.  I have no clue how it got started or why it interested me.  Mazes are a peculiar thing to draw.  Perhaps it’s because they’re not difficult.

I also took up guitar at around age 19.  I wanted to play drums as a child but my parents would not allow it, too much noise.  So I got a bit of a late start playing an instrument but I’ve been learning for a long time now.  It’s part of who I am.

Then there was writing.  I used to write poetry sometimes.  I devoured Jack Kerouac and went through my hopeless romantic phase like seemingly every kid.  Sometimes I would write on the side, but I never focused on it.

Those three things – drawing, playing music, and writing, were for the most part put aside in my life.  My chosen field, my track in life, was mostly a technical one.  And I became damn good at it.

I worked my way up the chain at my job to a big-wig, only to find one day that I lost the stoke.

Where did the stoke go?

In reality, there’s a STEM side to me, and a creative side.  My life track followed the former.  But life is long, and things change.

 

Take Me Way Back

Last spring, while cleaning out the house I grew up in to move my Mother out, I stumbled up some of my high school notebooks.

They had mazes in them – that I drew.  Amazing mazes!

I flipped through, astounded at the time it must’ve taken to draw them.  How much important material did I miss in class while I did that!!

I wondered if I still had it in me, could I still draw these mazes?  It’s not hard really.  The hard part is spacing the lines out evenly to make them look symmetrical.  As far as drawing goes, it’s entry-level stuff.

So I drew a new maze.

Man it felt like old times, I still had it!  Well, not really, this new one isn’t so symmetrical.  But it has character.  Then, I had an idea – what would this maze look like in Photoshop?  I could play with it, do things to it.  Who knows what it could be warped into.

Well, here’s that maze I drew last summer, it’s a small one.

Underwhelming right?  Yep, you could definitely do just as good, probably better.

But I scanned it and found that the lines looked really cool on the computer screen when you zoomed it.  I put it in Photoshop and made a few small adjustments.  And it became this.

 

No, I didn’t draw the maze on a pillow.  I’m selling the design on things as part of my graphic design side-hustle!  The first time it sold I was super-stoked!

Here was a weird passion that I had as a teenager and now I revived it and turned it into something.  I now make some money from it!

Before you scoff thinking you were led down the wrong road here, let me be clear – the point of this post IS NOT to simply hawk my side-hustle and ask you to buy a pillow with a maze on it.  The point is to ask:

What did you push aside in your life?  Where did you get your stoke?

What was part of your blinking cursor when you were younger?

Being financially independent and semi-retired is giving me the security net and the time to bring back the possibilities of my blinking cursor.

Some things I loved as a kid no longer interest me, like collecting salamanders.  But others, like drawing, writing, and playing music definitely do.

I’m falling in love again with the creative side of my personality.  And more and more, I’m thinking it’s the muse that I need to pursue now.

I’ve been making money from my graphic arts side-hustle for two years now, to the tune of a hundred bucks or more each month.  It’s a start.

I’ve now made more than a buck at writing through this bog (barely, …..seriously I mean barely).

And I’ve played in rock bands in the past, three of them actually.  I’m a marginally talented guitarist, but rock music is such that it doesn’t have to be great to be consumed.  That’s the beauty of it.  It’s not Mozart.

My last band almost got a paid gig but fell short.

I like the notion of being able to say that I’ve made money from drawing, writing, and playing music – no matter how limited my talents are.

I like to create things and throw them out there in the world.  It’s a wonderful contrast to the more rigid and practical career I had.  

Make no mistake, when I need to write a blog post and feel less than inspired, the real blinking cursor is sometimes my enemy.  Cruelly flashing at me, mocking me.

But that’s all part of the creative process, the struggle.  Sometimes you’re on game, and sometimes you suck.  Even the Beatles had bad nights when they played live!

Being financially independent is giving me the time and space to revisit passions and interests long ago forgotten.  I have no clue if they’ll amount to anything.  But I do know they’re reviving my stoke in life.  They’ve made the blinking cursor exciting again.

And for that I’m happy.

 

Your turn – What was part of your blinking cursor?