Susan in 4th grade.

It was 4th grade art class; the assign­ment  was to cre­ate an ani­mal out of paper mache. I thought it would be a fun assign­ment. When the teacher came to my sta­tion she said “What is that sup­posed to be?” “Why it is an Orange Polka Dot Giraffe” I said with pride. “Well, giraffes aren’t orange and they don’t have polka dots.” The class laughed.

Who told you grow­ing up you couldn’t _________

We all have that moment in time when we were told, you can’t write, you can’t draw, you can’t sing, or you can’t______. We play this over in our heads. When we get older we believe that per­son. They said it, they must be right and it  has become part of our inner dialog.

It some­how morphs into that lit­tle voice in our heads, and we believe it. Why? What if we stopped believ­ing that voice? Would you try that very thing and maybe become really good at it? Well that is exactly what I did.

Mov­ing to a place of creativity

I took my Orange Polka Dot Giraffe home. He sat in my room and he went well. My room had giant yel­low and orange daisies on one wall, and yel­low and orange paint on the other walls.  The giraffe became a fix­ture. He guarded over my draw­ings and he stood as a reminder to keep doing what I loved — Art!

I kept draw­ing and I started sell­ing some of my art work. In high school I was a fea­tured artist in the art gallery in our office.  I started cre­at­ing cus­tom cards and I still draw today. I cre­ate children’s books and toys when I am not busy being a graphic designer.

Defeat or magic

It is up to you. Do you want to take what some­one said all those many years ago and throw your hands up in defeat or do you want to make magic? I know that an Orange Polka Dot Giraffe is not mag­i­cal, in real life there is no such thing, but mine was.

With par­ents who encour­aged self expres­sion, with love in my heart, and a pas­sion for what I love, that Orange Polka Dot Giraffe was truly mag­i­cal. We are not great at every­thing we do. We all have talents. It is this artist’s belief that with a lit­tle tal­ent mixed with love and pas­sion, she can grow to be any­thing she sets her mind on being.

Your magic giraffe

Find that moment when you were told you couldn’t do_______. Go out and prove that teacher, par­ent, or school chum wrong. Find your magic giraffe and see what jour­ney he or she will take you on.

The first step of the jour­ney is to tell some­one, any­one, what defeated you; so if you found this at all use­ful, share your story here. I for one would like to know how many magic giraffes are out there run­ning around.

Thanks for let­ting me share.