To many of those who knew me when I was younger, this whole writing thing came as a surprise. It surprised me too. I had to break down a lot of mental models to get to the point where I could call myself an artist without sarcasm or scorn.

I’ve tried to trace it back. For the longest time when I was younger, I considered myself a realist—which, as we know, is a cynic who doesn’t want to admit it. I was dismissive of creative types, largely because my parents never considered themselves creative, nor does anyone in my extended family. I’m the weird one. Where did it come from?

I’m still not sure, but I did figure out one thing: Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved to build. The earliest manifestation of this was LEGO bricks, of which I still have plenty. (My future kids are going to love those boxes upon boxes of LEGOs, or they will get no love from me! I kid, I kid … mostly.)

I loved playing with LEGOs. I built all sorts of stuff, with the instructions or without, cities my action figures could smash apart or projects I could proudly display to my parents. I remember filling up an old table we had with miniature worlds, a table my nieces of nephews still play on today. Does my heart good to see it.

That was just the earliest incarnation of my love for building. I did a lot of it while playing video games in my teenage years. Where others would play MMORPGs to do a few dungeons, goof off, and explore, I found myself forming raiding alliances and building guilds which would go on to be the biggest and baddest organizations on my servers. Where others were playing an RPG, I was playing an RTS, with real people as the pieces in my empire.

In truth, the real reason why I become interested in writing is probably a lot of things. I read a ton when I was younger, which is probably the number one reason. But I think my propensity for building (rather than competing, for example) may have had something to do with it.

Of course, I only figured this out in retrospect, and I could be totally wrong. But that’s how life always seems to work.