Once, I thought, I could be an artist. Maybe a cartoonist, as that seemed to be the most appealing type of artist to be. You could tell a story with any type of art for sure, but a cartoonist told a story that felt in motion. As a fall back, perhaps some other sort of artist, I thought, that perhaps didn’t need the prowess of the more traditional forms of art. Of course, what I didn’t realise then was that any form of art required a certain prowess or at least openness of thought. Being an artist wouldn’t be for me. Certainly not in the way I had thought when an encouraging art teacher had noted similarities between the style of my random brush strokes and some well known abstract pieces. They were just being kind and then getting onto the next child. There’s no doubt that my teenage mind also took it way too seriously.

Cartoons were different. My uncle was a successful cartoonist, I could make a passable copy of some of my favourite characters from Dragonball graphic novels and I could loosely string together words for a few panels. Alas, I struggled to invent my own characters in my own style and in any event, I really struggled to get past the torso when drawing, and even then only in the head on perspective. I still sketched out panels with stick figures, though it never expanded properly past any of that. So, Cartoons out. What next then?

It was either concurrently or just after that I was trying my hand at modding old Gameboy ROMs using Hex editors and the like. I did not get far. Somehow I linked up with a person who was in the midst of translating a Japanese game into English and modifying bits slightly. It was some RPG that I can’t remember the name of. I claimed that I could translate Japanese to English and he got me on board his project to do so. Now, to be clear, I still don’t even speak Japanese. Back then, my brother was studying it a school and I thought I could make use of his textbooks to translate. Oh dear was I wrong. That was a very short lived portion of my artistic and creative life.

From then, I grew a bit older, moved on to university and then work. Throughout all of the time I had liked to tell stories. So that was it. I’m not sure my writing necessarily qualifies as art, but it is my creative outlet.