Hey you, shut up.

When I was a kid and someone asked me what I wanted to be, I dreamed of being an artist. I loved painting, music and all things creative.

My imagination was a giant stone*, but like many kids, I began editing it.

+In 2004, I entered high school in the Bay Area. It was a school filled with mostly Asians and Indians. Only math and science were cool. For the first time, my stone chipped.

+In 2007, I applied to college. Only certain schools were considered success to everyone around me. Once again, my stone chipped.

+In 2008, I was advised to take a business or engineering degree. This would provide the best shot at a job. That job would ideally be in tech. Over and over again, my stone chipped.

Shortly after, if someone asked me what I wanted to do, my answer was “get a job at a tech company, and one day, start a company of my own.”

By now, that giant stone was tiny. Actually, it was more like a f*ing pebble, carved out by everyone but me.

So it shouldn’t surprise you, if I said, in the summer of 2015, I was working on achieving that pebble. I took the plunge out of my tech job to become an entrepreneur. I was going to build an app, and even began prototyping the product.

In July of 2015, I had to momentarily put the project on hold for a vacation. I was going to visit Paris. For those of you who read my other posts, by now you know that art had become my favorite hobby.

During the trip, I planned to visit galleries, museums and artist studios. In one of those studios, I happened to meet a painter who told me about his art. I began to walk around his studio, and the daydreaming immediately commenced…

~I wonder what it’s like to live in Paris and be an artist. What if I quit my job in tech and just did art? Obviously not possible, but so cool~

So there I was having this conversation with myself, in my head, when something inside of me snapped — How could this be a reality for him, but just a daydream for me?

It was the d*mn internal fact checker. A debate of two voices began.

The child said “Why don’t you consider entering the art world full time? It could be more than a hobby.” The adult laughed.

She was turning this whole experience into a sort of fiction, keeping the pebble at its same size. I was killing my own curiosity. So I did something I never do — I told my adult self to shut up, and I let the pebble grow.

When I got back to San Francisco, I wrote up a new plan for what I wanted to do in the art world. I also had the old plan for the app. It was clear that I had a decision to make. I could only pick one plan.

I left tech.

It was then that my imagination woke up after 17 years of hibernating.

If you are wondering what happens next, you’ll have to hit the green Follow button. More later..

UPDATE: Next post is up — To My Fellow Imposters