I was lucky enough to be raised in a household where entrepreneurship was the basic approach to work. Although my parents struggled a lot post-Communist Revolution, they always tried to have their own business.
Suddenly everyone was free and there was so much possibility — what do you do with so much potential? This was a fantastic time to start something.
My folks always used to say that it’s the best feeling to be your own boss. I feel like these words stuck with me up to this day, it’s in my DNA.
I never actually had a “real” 9-5 job. Or any kind of job really besides what I’m doing today.
Surprisingly I was able to pull this off somehow, wow.
I’m honestly giving myself a pat on the back for this. And anyway, I wouldn’t have survived to this day with a 9-5 job.
I went all-in from the start.
Naive and determined.
Daydreaming hardcore.
It seemed so ambiguous back then how could you make a career from art. I was stuck in a small city, with reminiscences of the Communist regime at every turn — nothing special ever happened here.
But I was audacious enough to try anyway.
It was a mixture of teenage-y delusion mixed with frustration-fueled drive.
Was there anything else out there anyway?
Failing wasn’t an option for me.
And even when it was the option, I didn’t want to accept it.
I guess it sometimes helps to have a bit of audacity even if you don't have much to back it up with.
I was boiling in a soup of uncertainty day by day. It got scary at some point.
Don’t get me wrong, it still gets scary sometimes even today. I made peace with the fact that it’s part of my job. “It’s gonna be scary and I will enjoy it!” are words I would often say in my head.
Not knowing what tomorrow brings. Not having stability and reassurance was bringing me mixed feelings big time.
Enjoyable and frightening — my kind of combo! When you have been in survival mode all your life, this seems normal.
Backtracking to my high-school years. I was 17 when I decided I should start my career somehow.
I felt a sense of urgency. I had to get to work ASAP. Less complaining, more doing. More, more, more of anything.
And this is what I always say — start now, start today.
Don’t wait for the “perfect time” to share your work. Don’t wait for it to “get better” before you can show it. It’s never gonna be perfect.
There will always be more to add, more to learn, and more to adjust.
Do it today.
For yourself.
I was stuck in a city in the middle of nowhere and my dreams were big. My temporary escape was the internet. I finally had a lantern in a long dark tunnel.
Social media was starting to gain traction. And something clicked in me — was this my gateway to the world?
Digital was becoming the new normal. It was slowly embedding into our lives — into my life.
I asked my parents to buy me a graphic tablet. It was a Wacom Intuos small. I still remember my huge enthusiasm when we went to buy it.
And I did what every other Romanian teenager would do: pirated Photoshop, pirated some brushes, and went right to it.
For the most part of my life, I felt like Claire Fisher from Six Feet Under. Not because I was an outcast but because my family was in the funeral services business.
My dad and uncle made funeral monuments, my mom sold funeral ceramic photos (those you stick on the monuments) and my other uncle had a coffin business.
I started to question life and especially death early since it was so present in our lives. I wanted to get comfortable with it since I knew we’d eventually meet.
Sometimes my newly acquired digital skills came in handy for the family business. Let’s just say I had my fair share of retouching portraits of dead people whom I had no idea who they were.
This culminated in the moment when I had to retouch a photo of grandma when she passed away.
I was requested to draw a blue skies background for the photo — so I did. And while I was drawing those skies, her death started to slowly feel real.
This is just a way where digital drawing meshed into my life unexpectedly. Nobody prepares you to retouch your dead grandma’s photo and blissfully paint some fluffy skies in the background too.
Was this a Black Mirror episode with an artsy twist?