I’m at this moment listening to writer and artist Eddie Campbell get interviewed on Inkstuds. This is good timing as I just picked up 9 of his Alec and Bacchus books from the Top Shelf $3 sale (still 2 days left.) He just made an amazing quote on starting up new pursuits and committing to them.
In my teens I had already decided that I was an artist. Not that I wanted to be one, that I already was one. In my head I was one. I think to succeed you’ve got to be slightly mad. It’s not just a matter of deciding what you want to be, you have to believe you already are that thing, it’s just that nobody else has noticed yet.
I think this is excellent advice that I’ve inadvertently been following my whole life. No one asked me to be a radio talk show host, or a podcaster, or a conference organizer. For that matter, when I went to graduate school in computer science I had never actually taken a computer science course in my life but in my mind I was the thing and I made it happen. Decide what you want to be, decide you are that thing and manipulate reality until it is true.