I may not have gone where I intended to go….

…..But I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist. I loved to draw and paint along side my mom and my grandmothers. I loved the feeling of a pen in my hand (I hate pencils) I loved the feeling of paper against my skin.

As I got older, I toyed with the idea of being a doctor or veterinarian. (Both scrapped because it hurts me too much to see others in pain.) But alas, such a future just wasn’t for me.

When I entered high school, a bad grade in an art class almost took me away from art all together. I couldn’t believe that I got such a bad grade in a class that I was naturally good at.
Did I talk too much? Did I not do the assignments as the teacher intended? Did I miss something here?

Either way, art is supposed to be subjective. How can I be graded because I did some things a bit differently?

I thought I was graded unfairly. (I still hold a grudge. Probably shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I do). But alas, high school isn’t always the best incubator for talent. I talked too much. So I got a C in Art class. I learned some from that class, but mostly I learned I didn’t want to waste my time in art classes.

So I took drafting classes instead. All four years of high school. Almost every semester.
I loved those classes. I loved the clean lines, the drafting arm. I even loved the erasers. As the semesters went on, I got more and more freedom from the instructor to design what I wanted.

And that is where I met my boy. The love of my life. My other, sometimes better, half.
We sat together in drafting and due to our history of many, many, drafting classes, we had a special assignment to work on together. I fell for the guy who helped me cut balsa wood for a model house. He had a quick sense of humor, a good heart, and great smile. It was like a light bulb went off in my head.

We spent two semesters together before enrolling in a night class together. Then we started dating.

We were going to study architecture (me) and mechanical drafting (him) but before we started our freshman year, we decided to go another route.

Graphic Design.

The fun of drafting, without all the extra math. (Do you know what the density of concrete is? I for sure don’t.)

From six years old I knew where I wanted to go, I just didn’t know how I was going to get there.

And thus, I got where I needed to be.

Read all the other great entries at Yeah Write #57 here.. here..