Giving Up Would Be Too Easy

It's the monday before Christmas and I'm here at work. I went to Starbucks and bought a cup of coffee (caramel macchiato) and drank it super fast. Last summer I went on a trip with my Mom and my Nephew to Alabama. I remember at one point I we were in the middle of Mississippi surrounded by huge green trees and humidity. In hopes of finding a restroom soon there was a light up ahead...STARBUCKS. My mom and I discussed how funny it was to have one in the middle of nothing. The first time I traveled East it was late summer 1996. I drove my 1984 honda prelude, my mom had a 85' suburban and we had a Penske. My brother/sister/mom/nephew made the trip. My father stayed behind to sell the property in texas. My mom took a job in Hampton, VA. I started my senior year of high school at Kecoughtan High. It was absolutely different from where I was coming. School was in a residential area. My previous schools were in the country. All three schools elementary, middle, high schools were on the same farm road all within one mile. I had gone there since 2nd grade-11th. So Virginia was a total culture shock. I kept to myself mostly and wrote/draw/painted. I got a job at the local school print shop. So i would go to school from 8am till noon then go to the printshop 3 blocks away and worked from 1230-430. I LOVED THAT PLACE. i had my own press and learned how to bind and run an A.B.Dick offset printer. exposing my own films and all that good stuff. I got to make my own sketchbooks! i still have one. I think i copied a painting by mark johnson that i saw in transworld in it. The only crappy thing about the job was that it paid once a month because it was a school. and i was only working four hours a day. luckily those days gas was less than a dollar. Before we moved I was working at Fast Forward at NorthStar. I was making my own stickers and tshirts. I remember seeing an OBEY sticker somewhere and that night went home and bootlegged it. Out of bright orange crack n peel paper i made a stencil out of poster board and dabbed it with a marksalot marker. I was already making Frankenstein stickers and putting them up everywhere. My good friend started dj'ing and i made a batch of stickers for him (GOLCONDA). with my bootleg obey stickers i wanted them glossy so made the sticker as wide as a roll of packing tape (1.5 inch) and covered the image and cut with an exacto. TONS of labor went into these damn things. So when we went out skating i was putting them up every where. There is still a frankenstien sticker on a register at Chic Fil A in the mall. I was totally into it. Then there was a write up on Black Market in Transworld. it showed 2 or three pics of ads and the write up was like 1.5 inches wide and top to the bottom of the page. it had a phone number... not sure about website... so the next day i called 411 in San Diego and tracked down Mr. Shepard Fairey. He was ultra nice and I got nervous. We were just talking about skateboaring and design and stuff and he was talking about some projects he had going on and I was shook! this guy was the real deal. At one point he said "c'est la vie". He might as well have been speaking martian. I was an idiot! If it wasn't spanish (taco bell menu) i had no idea what you were saying. I think he realized this when my reply was...."uh....yeah". So he politely asked for my address and said keep in touch. 3 days later I received the biggest package in the mail with a huge black market sticker sealing it. IT WAS HEAVY!!!!!!!! from that point on I knew I wanted to be involved in/around graphic design and vowed to read more (because I did not want to be embarrassed for not knowing quotes in french)(not that I only read french stuff from there on out, but making an attempt to learn from more than just my immediate surroundings). i had a box of stickers and stencils with me in my honda and at every stop on the way to virginia...i bombed everything.
geeez that was 9 years ago and I still make stickers with crack and peel and sharpies in my spare time. I am fortunate to have met many many many people who are heavy influences in my life...more so...getting to work some of them or have me involved in their projects. I mean...I haven't even been west of Colorado but had a toy I customized show in JAPAN! are you kidding me!!!!!? ahhhhhhhh.... C'est la vie.