“How did you always know what you wanted to do?”

A while ago two of childhood friends asked me.

“How did you always know what you wanted to do? Ever since you were a kid, you were already drawing and making the kinda stuff you’re doing now!”

Me at 16, with a stack of drawings and a home made light-table by my dad.

I see a lot of people around me struggle to figure out what to devote their lives to. But as a kid I remember my friends also had pretty clear ideas. They wanted to be dentists, motor bikers and cops. But their ideas seemed to change every now and then. I thought maybe they were subject to outside influence. Maybe from their parents… I can’t speak for their experience.

But my parents never nudged me towards anything. They told me when I was about to choose my education that it would be pretty hard to be an artist, and asked wether I had even considered anything else. I told them firmly “nope, this is it, it’s my dream.” My family has had several daschhounds (or wienner-dogs as I like to call them). When a daschhound doesn’t want to continue their walk, they tend to plant their front paws firmly and refuse to take another step. My family LOVED that. Maybe it was this love for stubbornness that made them go “okay, guess he’s like that” when I told them I wouldn’t consider anything else. I had their support.

Their support wasn’t the only one I had though. My friends, classmates and many adults showered me in compliments. So I showed anyone my drawings anytime I had the chance to. They laughed heartedly and seemed amazed at what I could do. So I always felt encouraged to keep showing my stuff.

That rush and the support was important, but it goes a bit deeper than that.

I always loved to draw, but I didn’t necessarily love to draw because pushing a pencil around is fun. It was because of the goosebumps I got while reading the manga series One Piece (and a few others, but let’s stick to One Piece to keep this essay simple). I stayed up way too late into the night reading about this rubber-boy, named Luffy. He also made his own definition of being a pirate.

Read from right to left (from One Piece by Eiichiro Oda)

One Piece didn’t just inspire me to draw, it inspired me to go on adventures I might not have thought of otherwise. I would pack fruits, chips and sandwiches with my friends and head off into the forest, with the intention of getting lost or running into something unexpected.

At school we played and pretended to be those characters, we looked super dorky and got teased by the other kids who were concerned with looking normal. But we didn’t give a shit.

As a kid, inspiration consume all of you. It can influence you far beyond the way you draw lines on a page. Reading One Piece altered my way of being, hardened my determination and ambitions and made me want to choose who I would become. To me, reading One Piece felt like reinforcing my spirit.

Luffy’s dream is to become The King Of Pirates, he says it anytime he has the chance, no shame.

So I thought I should have a dream of my own as well. I decided I wanted to be The Best Artist In The World.

As a kid I was never that driven to get good at drawing realistically, I was happy drawing my cartoony characters. But I felt compelled to define “The Best Artist In The World”, in a literal and logical way. I thought the person deserving that title must be able to draw anything, in a perfectly photo-realistic manner, straight from memory. The best pencil pusher.

I often told my friends and classmates about my dream.

I even asked my friends what their dreams were. I wanted to support their dreams. Much like Luffy, who would beat down a big bad shark-man to stand up for his friends. Once I got real jazzed while we walked in the forest, I tried to give them an inspiring speech about how “we should promise to always pursue our dreams no matter how hard it may become.”

My stubbornness about pursuing what I loved came from the admiration I had for Luffy.

But something changed when I got older. The embarrassment you start to grow as a teen made me stop saying that I wanted to become The Best Artist In The World. I never stopped drawing or writing stories though.

Over time, I began to value art differently and I thought back to when I was younger.

I had tried to carefully imitate the pencil pushing of One Piece. But deep down, what I really wanted to capture wasn’t the looks.

“The Best Artist In The World” didn’t need to be defined the way I had defined it as a pre-teen. Instead it could be about getting better at spreading goosebumps than the artists who goosebumped me.

So even though I stopped ripping-off One Piece after I became a teen. I still feel like I’m doing just the same thing as I always did. I try to bottle those goosebumps and amplify them further and stronger. It don’t care if it’s through a blog post, comic, game or whatever else I might feel like trying in the future.

So how did I always know what I wanted to do?

It might not sound like a mystery at all anymore. With all the support I had and with such a strong source of inspiration.

To my friends it might look like I always knew what I wanted to do, because I always made comics and imagined video games. But I had no idea you could do all that at the same time. I only discovered it was possible because I followed my bliss. I could not have dreamed of this.

So I will keep exploring, maybe I will run into something even more unexpected.