Seriously though, I can remember when I was a kid I loved to draw and color. Whenever I got sick, I'd lay on the floor or the couch and color. It was one of those times when I was sick, that I had a major aha moment. I was coloring with granny on the floor and she ripped the page out from the middle of the coloring book to color it. I was stunned! You see, I would start a coloring book from the front and move to the back - you know, like a book. But Granny ripped that sucker right out without hesitation, then she ripped another one out to color as well. I guess she saw my stunned face and she said with a shrug "I'll make my own book."  

(The picture is of Granny with my kids :), Granny lived to be 96 years old)

It was an "aha moment" in so many ways. That one moment taught me "I own it, make it mine", "just because that it is a certain way, doesn't mean that is the way it needs to stay." I ripped a page out too, put the book aside, and focused on the one page right in front of me 

But I have to say, that aha moment didn't translate into the rest of my life until I was 40-something years old.

The mentality of moving in the order that was presented remained with me, and as such, I graduated High School, went to college to get a degree in Marketing, and went to grad school to get a Masters in Business Administration. Then I got a job with IBM and married my college sweetheart, Ben. I followed the standard path, I followed an unwritten book.

After a year with IBM, I transitioned to UPS where I became a senior programmer analyst. I got up at 6am, went to the gym, showered and changed at the gym, and stopped almost every morning at Starbucks for a coffee and cranberry orange muffin. And then sat in a cubicle for 8-9 hours a day.

I liked my job, I liked my coworkers. But something was missing. I didn't have something of my own.

One day, during my lunch break I went to an interior design store looking for artwork for our new home. (I often shopped at lunch to escape for retail therapy.) I stared at a reproduction print of a painting, debating whether to buy it for $250. The debate with myself was "surely I could paint that". In the end, I bought the reproduction and then went to Hobby Lobby to buy an oil painting kit and a Bob Ross DVD.

That evening I sat in the garage with an easel rigged up using a ladder, a small tv with the built-in DVD player that I had since I was 19, and my new paint supplies. I couldn't wait to dive into that DVD and paint majestic mountains! So here is what the DVD didn't say: how to apply the paint, the pressure, the mediums, color mixing, and so much more :) - so my mountains were total and utter crap.

BUT my head kept saying 'you can do this.'

My mom always told me "can't never could".

That phrase took me a while to figure out, but I got it eventually. The word "Can't" doesn't mean that I am incapable of doing something. Instead, it means one of two things is stopping me
1) I don't want to or
2) I need more education.

In this case, I needed more education. So I found a teacher.

Going to her house on Mondays after work was the best part of my week! It would take me 45 minutes to drive to her house in Atlanta traffic and 1 and a half hours to drive home at 9 pm. I painted every chance I got. I invested in a decent easel and took over a corner in the guest bedroom.

I would paint anything and everything.

I'd bring in my rolly cart of paint supplies, and a wet painting into my cubicle every week because I didn't want to leave them in my car while I was at work (car temperature fluctuations are not a good thing for artwork). And to my surprise, people wanted me to paint things for them. I was commissioned to paint a house for an anniversary present, a newborn, a bar scene, a landscape, and even a golf course.