It's Gary Vaynerchuk's fault I'm the world's greatest homeless Sharpie artist

I just listened to this keynote speech by Gary Vaynerchuk while I was drawing a Sharpie doodle art picture.  The video hit YouTube 49 minutes before I turned it on.  This is why I'm a 52-year-old goofball drawing cool Sharpie drawings for a living.  Because I know Gary's right.  And, because as I started to figure that out, first listening to talks and reading books by Seth Godin a few years back, and then some Mitch Joel, and then a ton of different TED Talks, and then Amanda Palmer and then Gary Vee and Simon Sinek and others.  While I was getting started, I was at a point in my life where I WAS the guy with no phone, like the guy he calls up on stage in the clip above. And I was the guy with LITERALLY, no money.  Seriously, shit was that fucked up , I started without a dime.  I was living with my mom at age 49.  Instead of blowing my head off for that reason alone, or because I couldn't find ANY "real job" in Kernersville, North Carolina, or because I weighed over 300 pounds, or because all my teeth are broken off at the gum line.  I decided to start drawing stuff in my Sharpie style that I would actually want to hang on my own wall, and to create my own job with that.

Yeah, when suicide gets discussed, or thought about, those are some winning reasons to do it.  I know, I damn near did it.  Shit gets bad sometimes.  Life is tough.  We all have crazy battles of one kind or another.  I was coming back from an actual overdose attempt.  I've been there.  I had some crazy shit start happening in my head a few years back after my dad died.  I went to the psych ward.  I had a complete asshole for a psychiatrist who put me on super strong meds and damn near made me a zombie.  I struggled through that shit for a couple of years.  But I LIKE to work.  I LIKE to create stuff, I LIKE to start new projects.  I LIKE being creative.  It was always there.  But the meds sucked.  So I stopped taking them.  Then my symptoms went crazy.  I went overboard and took enough lithium to kill a yak in 2015.

I damn near died.  I spent a couple days in intensive care, then got dialysis in my neck to get as much lithium as possible out of me, then several days in a regular hospital room while I was too weak to stand up.  I had a "sitter" in my room to keep me from doing anything else stupid.  That's some low level intern who just has to sit there 12 hours a day, just in case I would try anything. 

My heart rate went crazy, they were afraid I might have a heart attack a few times.  Then I spent several more days in the psych ward, in the addict section, because that was the only bed open.  I did my days.  I drew a few lame pictures with crayons and colored pencils because I just couldn't play spades all day like the others.  And I got out.

You know what, I had insurance that paid for three weeks of all day therapy, Cognitive Behaviorial Therapy (CBT).  That helped.  I got on meds that really helped.  I got a new psychiatrist that was a cool guy and actually gave a damn.  A few months later I decided to focus all my energy on drawing my Sharpie pictures and turning that into a small business.  I had a bunch of Sharpie markers, a small pad of sketch paper, and a $65 refurbished laptop that was running Windows XP in late 2015.  I'm that guy.  I'm the guy Gary jokingly makes fun of.  I had no money.  My mom is always in financial crisis.  I didn't have a phone.  I STILL don't have a smart phone.  I have a friend, a guy who digs my art and has bought a bunch, that's going to give me his old phone soon, and turn it on for a while to help me get things going better.  So I'll FINALLY deal with learning Instagram before too long.

I'm that guy.  My mom and I fought so much, that I took off, and literally lived in a tent in the woods of a different city, for 9 1/2 months, to get my Sharpie art business off the ground.  It was tough.  But I also loved doing it, and I knew it was the right step for me at the time.  So now I do a totally original kind of Sharpie art, and I make consistent money at it.  Not a lot yet, not enough to live on, but I'm on the way.  I'm old, slow and steady is fine with me.  I can wait.

I just left the city where I turned $15 and a box of Sharpies, while living in a fucking tent, into an income of $500 to $600 a month, in a year.  Go ahead, laugh it up.  Then figure out the ROI on $15 to $500 a month.  The end number is small, but the ROI is big.  Coming out of homelessness is hard.  Starting an art-based business is hard.  But I got it going.  And I just left that city to head back out West to Southern California, where I know a lot of people, where I spent most of my adult life, and where it's far more entrepreneurial than where I was.




But a guy flaked on paying for the last drawing I did.  I took a bus to a city I've never been to, and got temporarily stuck.  I spent the last three nights sleeping in bus stations.  I'm typing this blog post in a library in the hood of Richmond, Virginia.  I'd never been here until 40 hours ago.  That's as far as I could get on the money I had, and I was traveling on a half a shoestring budget.  Small business people and entrepreneurs get that. 

Several people in my old city got pissed and held off paying me money they owe me. So I'm in a city I've never been in.  And I'm STILL drawing my Sharpie pictures.  I'm still blogging.  And I'm going to sell some of my art to someone over the next day or two.  That will get me to a Facebook friend's place near Chicago.  I'll get that phone and start promoting my stuff better.  I'll keep learning and self-educating.  I'll keep drawing Sharpie art.  I'm going to draw Gary Vaynerchuk a picture of Al Toon that will blow his fucking mind before too long.  Because he's right.  The internet is changing EVERYTHING.

I'm the old guy.  I'm the guy who didn't surf the web until 2008.  I'm the guy who started with no money, selling art on Facebook, on Fred Flintstone's old laptop, a few months out of the psych ward. This isn't a "poor me" story.  Your story may be worse.  But I've been through a fair amount of shit, and I'm doing what I love doing, and building a business out of it.  It's taking a while, but it's happening.  At some point, it will start happening faster.

I'm that guy.  And I'm working my face off, as Gary says, to draw really cool pictures with Sharpie markers.  That's my thing. 

What's your thing?  Listen to these two talks.  Then go do your thing.

Google "#sharpiescribblestyle" to see dozens of my drawings.

A few hours later:  When I embedded these to speeches into into my blog earlier, I had no intention of writing the post.  This is one that just came blasting out of me.  I just went through and proofread it.  Then I contacted someone who asked about a drawing a couple months ago, and I got the info needed and green light to start the next drawing.  I'm working again, even in a really sketchy situation.   And it feels really good.