Childhood: The Most Extra Super Serious Time Of Our Lives

Sometimes I marvel, and I hope you do too, at how we get everything figured out as babies.

If we are left to grow, or become fierce wild animals, we get really good at what already calls to us as babies.

I loved adventure, and I became an adventurer, I had a cowboy hat, survival knife, and two tents.

I loved mud, because I could create multi-level, parking structures that I could run my matchbox cars through.

And I do it to this day, though my mud application architecture, not code, not frameworks, but a kind of thought mud that I sculpt.

And then I run data through it, mouse clicks, HTTP traffic, XML trees, and all kinds of data arrays.

I swear to goodness, I wasn’t playing in mud as a baby, nor did I like mud it self, as it always had stuff in it.

I was just architecting a structure that would accept a car on top, and poop it out on the bottom.

I haven’t touched mud Commodore 64, and now my slow little dual Raspberry PI 4/s, Rrrrr.

I liked art, and would doodle cathedrals in chalk, I just loved the… architecture.

And the day I realized that companies I was employed by, were ran by unqualified and uneducated pretenders…

I went to get an art book before quitting, and I was able to combine a wall projector with my canvas.

Using a photo editing program I studies shadows, colors, and even made a portable version.

Where I used graphite paper and a printout of my subject, boy do I love tortillons, they really changed my life.

I liked poetry, and philosophy, always imagining them as the highest of heights.

And I smushed the two together in my writings, creating poelosophy!

Highly acclaimed by the wortst of my critics, as neither of the two, and undoubtedly wrong.

And you know what I liked science, because of a book I borrowed from my grandpa.

Universe, Life, and Human, which is exactly what Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bryson, is about.

And I like, as most of us, looking at things, though a critical lense.

Rather than listening to, Bodybuilding advice, I toom matters in my own hands.

Inventing what I called, the Bodybuilding Engine.

Where hard to digest trail mix restores muscles. that then can be challenged, in order to grow more with protein.

But I challenged them with the number of lifts first, and then gradually increased the weight to grow muscle.

I just watched how my body was responding, and did more of what worked.

Rather than just listening to people, who think sarcasm is a social accomplishment.

When my bullies came at me, because their stupid dads cooked their brains.

For the inconvenience that their children became, no doubt.

I didn’t hurt them back, I’d push them way if they got to close, but would rather toughen my self up with their punches.

Then weaken, and become like the snarling beasts they were.

And you know what that is, class.

And West Point frames it best, by not fighting back I rose above the common levels of life.

When I came to America, I kept rising, right along my baby steps, to get good at what called to me.

When I stopped going to school, I filled my empty days by hanging out at a smoky game arcade.

I have never seen pixel art that good, previously I saw River Raid, Galaga, and Zack McCraken.

This was still before Wolfenstein and Doom, and seeing Street Fighter and The Simpsons made me love pixel art to bits.

I will never call my computer programs done, until they come with multiple themes/

Including ENCHANTING pixel art themes, ala Dark Souls user interface and the like.

And I don’t even have to promise myself that each new version of my program, will come with a life changing new graphic theme.

So the pixel art of my childhood, made me a graphic gesigner on top of a programmer.

Ladies and germtermen, being a baby, is serious business.

And to be clear, this is a matter of our personal curiosities.

We must never allow anyone to try to standardize us, because then, we pay a terrible price.

We neither master what other want us to learn, nor do we ever get good, at what calls to us from within.

So please, respect your constellation of curiosities.

If your mom wants you to be a doctor, take the money, and sign her up for med school.

If your father wants you to be a lawyer, take his beer, and say I need you to be sober for this.

And slowly and lovingly explain how you re-aged his schedule, to make sure he is crisp when attending his evening law school classes.

You be you, listen to your baby self, and become completely over powered for what dinky things life may throw at you.

Please, protect that which is already in you, as those are the things that will always be there calling for more.

That is your joy of learning, and your love of life, and which is more, that is where you will find more of your self.