This is from a storyboard started for a spec commercial the day my father returned to God. (After leaving the emergency room I went immediately to Home Depot to purchase security items for my newly-widowed-mother’s house…one of the most surreal experiences yet…as a friend said later that day, “It is a special time.”) Anyhow my Aunt graciously flew from California within hours, so, after spending two years caring for my bed-ridden father in suburban Florida, it was possible to reflect upon what I truly wanted to do, with Life.

Drawing was the only thing I could undertake that day, and, it has been the only activity I have loved consistently since nursery school, so…why not?

Sometimes I think we conceive of our true dreams, those we have held since childhood, as out of reach because we may think to realize them would be too fantastic to imagine, simply outrageous dreams. Life is too short for this manner of thinking. If trapped in such self-limitations the antidote may be to dream bigger by reframing our current “outrageous” dreams as commonplace expectations.

My outrageous dream is to become an American da Vinci/Shakespeare and enable other artists to supercede me…my commonplace everyday expectation is to feed and clothe myself, and hopefully an eventual family, by drawing. Nothing is humble about either goal — and nothing should be. Life is over too quic-

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but those who are really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”