Hard at corraling Sig 6 today. Got up at 5:30 and went at it. Wrote from seven to eight, then switched gears and started a couple art pieces. Came home for lunch and whipped out a little study, actually colorized a sketch I had done a year ago:
Daily Re-Whipout: "Gold Road: Ben Rux World"
One of the things I have realized doing this book project is I sure made a lot of vows and I sure failed a lot. Here are a few of the results from the vows I made as a young kid:
I never got to meet Norman Rockwell. I never became a spelling champ. I never played the Ed Sullivan Show. I never owned an XKE. I never had a hit record. I never got to date Annette Funicello and I never got to make out with Brigit Bardot. These are all things I vowed to do when I grew up.
But then it got worse. I have always hated the seventies which were always very dark times to me. Altamont, disco, Watergate and cocaine ("Hey, it's not addictive") to name but a few of the cultural mileposts that totally bummed me out.
By 1977 I had hit bottom. My wife left me, my truck was repossessed, the magazine (The Razz) was busted, one of my best friends had committed suicide, I was still plagued by acne and I was still stigmatized by being from Kingman (yes, I know, at least two of these were self-inflicted calamities).
I won't bore you with the turnaround or the epiphany that changed everything but suffice to say some of my later vows did come true. In some ways, I think I failed my way clear. Mulling all of this today I realized one authentic thing about myself:
"I have failed at many things in my life but I never failed at dreaming big."
—BBB