See what the end will be.

I often think about where I might be if I hadn’t given up on things so early.

If I hadn’t given up, I might have been a business owner.

In high school, I used to draw a lot. I drew on anything — my desk at school, my notebooks, my sketch pad.. anything. I often asked my father to take me to Michael’s and one day while perusing the aisles, I discovered “puffy paint,” which would allow me to paint on my clothes. So I did. I painted my favorite cartoon characters on my jackets, shirts and jeans, for no other reason than the fact that I couldn’t find clothes that had the characters and phrases on them in the way I wanted them presented.

When I wore these clothes to school or elsewhere, I would always get asked “where did you get that from?”

“I made it,” I would respond.

“YOU made that? How much would you charge to make one for me?”

Well I hadn’t really thought of that. I created things for myself and never really considered that anyone else would want them or even pay me to create it for them.

So, I calculated how much it would cost to purchase the paint and added $10 to that and that was my price.

“Ok.”

Ok?

People actually paid me to paint cartoon characters on their clothes.

Pretty soon more people would ask me to do so, both at school and in the neighborhood. My sister would “borrow” my sweatshirts and wear them to school and her friends started asking for items too.

I had started a little business of my own, if you could call it that, though I wasn’t really concerned with making a profit. I really just did it because I liked to draw.

I became the girl who made shirts. My value proposition was that each item was an exclusive — I didn’t create the same thing twice.

One day I got my first “bulk” order. An upperclassman at school asked if I could make 6–8 shirts for his “crew” in time for spirit week. I remember only charging him $10 per shirt, which was probably low-balling myself, but i convinced myself that it was justified because I already had the paint and he was providing the shirts. I delivered them on-time and he… and his crew… were satisfied.

And then I stopped doing it.

That’s one of the earliest memories I have when I think of the moments when I wish I kept going, that I had seen a vision all the way through. Granted I was in high school, but to be quite honest, I didn’t believe I was that good to warrant continuing it any further. It was just a hobby. I never expected anyone else to really take to my ideas.

I have many more examples that followed that moment that have led me to realize that I sometimes have a bad habit of giving up when it comes to my personal pursuits.

It’s something that I wish I didn’t do. Perhaps it’s a lack of confidence in myself and my capabilities, mixed with a little ignorance on really knowing the next steps. I think there are some people that can turn on the next gear to move their ideas along into fruition. They also seem to be able to operate without a spirit of fear of failure or criticism, they seem to be sure that they have a good thing… or at least they are willing to see it through to see if they do or don’t.

But I want to be different. I want to fully commit to myself that I’m going to see a thing through. As some who are familiar with that old gospel song, I want to “see what the end gon’ be.”

The past few months have been a period of awakening for me; an opportunity to see my faults and address them face-to-face because I finally have time to do it. The quiet moments have actually been quite loud. My ideas have been screaming at me, my inner voice has been much more than a quiet whisper, my gut has been stirring for months. I think… I know I owe it to myself to get out those ideas and see them through to whatever the end will be.