The D Word and my secret revealed!

It was 1987. I was failing Algebra and Geometry and taking Junior English again. My high school guidance counselor told me that I should probably look for work in civil service, working for the government.

It’s ironic considering that I’ve always loved to learn new things. I’m a voracious reader. I get lost in libraries because I impulsively snatch up a book on something like Animal Husbandry, then look around after Chapter 3 wondering where the time went.

So why was I failing in school? I knew the answer at 17: boredom. High school was boring. It was sitting in rooms all day, listening to a bored adult. Yawn.

After I barely squeaked past graduation (thanks to jazz band and weight training), I did what every other kid like me was doing. I enrolled in community college, worked at the mall and spent weekends getting drunk in the desert.

When I finally decided that I should do something with my art, the natural thing to do was find an art school. School is good, right?  At least at an art school I would be in a room all day doing something I was interested in.

I applied and got accepted to a very old commercial art and advertising school in Chicago. I had never taken a real art class before, so I had no idea what to expect. It was pretty cool, but unfortunately too expensive to continue past the first semester. Oops.

What’s a lost and discouraged 19-year old to do? Yep.

I joined the Air Force.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore with every detail of my life from 1990 to present. You’re welcome.

However, I’d like to share with you some of the things I’ve experienced and accomplished in the years between discouraged drop-out and Sparky Firepants Illustrator to the Stars. A few things:

• Flew 300 feet off the desert floor in a C-141 cargo plane, pushing stuff out the back
• Visited the Arctic Circle via the Norwegian Sea
• Honeymooned in Europe for two years
• Hung out with Mel Gibson on a movie set (and appeared in the film)
• Traveled across the U.S. (and back) a few times
• Helped develop and create an Emmy-winning TV show
• Created animation and graphics demonstrating complex molecular functions and presented to a judge to educate him on the process so he could make a ruling
• Homeschool my kids (well, I help)
• Pitched to a Hollywood producer (and got invited back to pitch more)
• Lived in NYC, Los Angeles, DC, Portland, and Chicago (by choice, of course)
• Demonstrated my 2D animation techniques to a guild of motion graphics pros
• Introduced my kids to France (hello, France!)
• Wrote, illustrated, and published a book
• Started an online school to teach my digital illustration methods

So there’s been a few things I done did. And that’s not everything, just the bigger stuff. My point is not to boast. In fact, most of the things on the list aren’t remarkable all by themselves. It’s the cumulative experience that required the ability (and desire) to learn new things and be interested in being educated.

Now here’s my secret, kids. I don’t have a degree of any kind. I never did finish college.

I just did stuff.

I’m not down on college or formal education at all. It’s great. It just wasn’t the thing I needed to get my stuff done, you know?

Please don’t tell my guidance counselor. Unless he plays the lottery, then somebody should definitely clue him in on his rotten gambling luck.

This came up in conversation last week and it’s been on my mind since. I think that to do anything of consequence, to accomplish anything at all, it’s more important to be open to experiencing new (yes, sometimes scary and weird) things than just completing formal education (unless you’re my surgeon).

If you get through college and get a degree so you can get a better job, I say “so what?”

You won’t change the world simply by earning a piece of paper in a room in Princeton, NJ. Now, if you happen to earn a degree in Princeton, NJ (or anywhere), that’s awesome. Good on ya. But I say that just means you should do more than those other people who don’t have degrees.

Don’t coast through a job on your papers. Don’t just stay below the radar and collect your fat check.

Do something amazing. Do something new, something that challenges you or the world. Be better than you would have without the degree.

I recently got some feedback on an animation piece I’ve been working on. The feedback was (unfortunately) dead on and it was simply, “Thanks for sending this. We need MORE.”

Man, that gets your heart racing. Sometimes you need someone else to kick you in the ass and say, “More!”

So give them more. Because if you do a bunch of stuff, even if it’s cool stuff, you owe it to the world to increasingly give more than you gave the last time.

Love what you’re doing. Celebrate success. Then figure out how to make it “more.”