My introduction to writing wasn’t the best. My interpretation on spelling words was more suggestive rather than based on being correct. It became easy to fear reading and writing when complaints followed many of my attempts. So, I ran away from exploring that world and stuck firmly inside my head.

 

Of course, my parents were not satisfied with this solution and they tried everything they could to alleviate this problem. They placed me in a lot of different learning centers; I would always go in nervous and uncomfortable, and I would come out nervous and uncomfortable. It seemed none of them worked. The word dumb would constantly flutter around, sometimes it was stated, sometimes it was drawn on with red ink, but most of the time the word throbbed inside my head. It wasn’t until I was ten, at much expense to my parents, I spent all summer at a new learning centre. It was a big, brown brick building, an hour away from home, and filled with instructors. I had too much one-on-one time, at least for any shy kid. The days were spent learning, of what, I have no idea. But I walked away with a better understanding of my brain. A visual learner, that’s how I operate.

 

I didn’t realize I never knew how to memorize before, apparently, I needed visual cues to encode information. After that, things got better. I started to take the guess work out of learning, and instead, put in self-appointed tips and tricks. That is to say, I began learning to learn. It wasn’t a flick-of-a-switch, it took a lot of time and hard work.

 

Even though my grades got better, the word ‘dumb’ continued to linger, I think it’s a plaque I nailed to my personality traits. The rest of my school years had me trying to be ordinary. Though ordinary was hard to do when surrounded by brilliant kids, who tried really hard to be even smarter. Like I said, the word ‘dumb’ continued to linger.

 

My relationship with writing made improvements, I learned how to better mimic the way others wrote. There was nothing unique or special about my words, but that was the goal.

 

As one so often does when they are younger, I spent some time volunteering. I knew the superficial benefits I would walk away with; a better-looking resume, a good feeling, and an accomplishment to say I was social that day. I volunteered at a soup kitchen, and even though it smelled like a soup kitchen, what I didn’t expect, was that it would shift my outlook on myself.

 

During each shift, there was a lot of time to kill. After some encouragement, I spent the time practicing my communication abilities on some very accommodating homeless individuals. What I realized was that they lived a life, and in their own way, they were fascinating. They had moments of happiness, of incredible skills, of frustrations, and bad luck. My stereotypical prejudices would have prevented me from knowing their story had I not just sat and listened.

 

It is the journey that makes a person unique. The roads we walk on are not simple and short, rather, they twist and turn. This leads to an imperfect person who is much more interesting than perfection.

 

Once I graduated from the school system, I started to realize I was a very creative person. I think the grades and comparisons made me cower into a very rigid sense of self. But when I let myself explore ideas and play with my imagination, I started to feel free. I began writing for fun. I loved storytelling and I was tired of holding stories in my mind. So, naturally I started with children’s books – there was no way I was going to entertain the idea of committing to writing over eighty thousand words to form a novel. I gained more confidence in myself when I was writing for fun than I did for school. Quickly, I learned more about my style of writing. The fact that I love writing about emotions, and people, and morals that require critical thinking. I love humor, though many of my books do not portray any of it. Ironically, writing somehow became an interesting outlet.

 

I never intended to create picture books, though I suppose I just stumbled upon them. I started with kids’ menus, it was at my restaurant, I needed to create one and naturally that transitioned into creating one for each month. They were thematic, and slowly I discovered I had built in a narrative that lived happily in my mind. After some years, and co-authoring a book with my father, I decided to create my own colouring-picture book hybrid, Bob & The Cupcake Quest. Once I started, it became easier to create the next one and so on, granting my obsessive personality style to be happy in this element.

 

Picture books to me were always an escape. If I didn’t want to read the words, I could create a story from the images. There is a bit of magic in that. I create books for myself, they are not simplistic, they are full of emotion. For me, it’s the characters, the feelings that define an interesting and complex journey, ripe with copious introspection.