My mother would describe my childhood self as a day-dreamer. That’s a euphemism for what most people would call spacey. Frankly, it fit since I was infatuated with becoming an astronaut. And I’m not just talking about drawing little spaceship pictures with crayons. I regularly practiced carrier landings on my F/A-18 flight simulator for hours, following real Naval training procedures with my authentic replica joystick and throttle in hands. All because I knew that carrier pilots have the best shot at moving up to space cadet. Later I found out near-perfect uncorrected vision is required to fly jets. I have horrible vision.

By my first year of college I’d come up with another way in. I was good at math and science, and doctors and scientists can be astronauts, right? I studied physics, anatomy and other left-brained stuff. It went well. Until a sudden twist changed things.

When I was 19 I got in a little bike wreck. I flew over my handlebars and smashed head first into the ground. I rolled out of it and ended up on my feet, and thankfully I was wearing a helmet. But since then my thinking changed a little. I didn’t realize it right away, and I may have flunked calculus in the mean time, but I clearly realized what drives me.

I abandoned my previous scientific ambitions and instead studied art, design and film. I started a company with my college friends and suddenly became responsible for all things marketing and advertising within the business. Thats when I discovered art direction.

For now, I’m counting on three things:

1. That the endo didn’t cause any permanent brain damage (so far so good)
2. A career that encourages me to keep day-dreaming
3. The rise of privatized space flight, so I can eventually just pay my way into outer space