I'm a artwork junkie. I like looking at art work. Looking at the detail, the intricacies of brush stokes, drawings.

As a teen, art was my medicine to help quell the turmoil going on inside my head. Kept me sane. I used to sit in my room for hours, messing with my oil paint sets, skept pads, and felt tip pens. My parents used to think something was mentally wrong with me, because I spent so much time in my room drawing. I did my chores, go back to my room, open up my sketch pad, find some copy paper, a pencil or paint brush and go off into another world. I loved art so much I wanted to make it a career.

As years passed I have had opportunities to go to school for it. As a matter of fact I was a part of the Houston Black Artist and Writers Organization by the age of 15yrs. When I was 17, I worked with Cultural Arts Council of Houston, Harris County. I had the opportunity to be in the running to attain a scholarship to get into an art school. I don't know what happened to me. What killed the artistic drive in me. I didn't finish my app for CACHH, passing up what could have let to a promising career. It seems that from that point my artistic desire and skill began to spiral downward.

However when I got to college I wanted to go to school and persue art as a career. Again I fell flat on my face. I got it in my head that art wasn't a good career choice. I would end up being a starving artist, living with my parents. I would be 40yrs old, in my parent's home, putting my name on my orange juice in their refrigerator, telling them not to drink it. I have a hard enough time dealing with the strained relationship I had with my parents. I was afraid for prolonging my suffering by choosing a career that would keep me trapped with them.

Sad thing is. I am almost 30 and I still live with my parents. My worst nightmare has come true. I keep thinking to myself. If I had gone through with my application, If I had accepted the opportunies to persue my love of art, would I be where I am right now? I also got an opportunity to do work for a mural in Austin, TX. I chickened out.

It's these aspects and more that make me feel so much like a failure. I have these grandiose plans and when an opportunity to act on it comes about I second guess my abilities and chicken out. I guess I deserve to be in the situation I am in. I didn't take initiative, action, movement into areas I wanted to me. I let outside influences guide me instead to listening to myself for a change. I pray I won't be stuck like this forever.