for those of you who know me as a contact on flickr or follow me on twitter, know that i like to sketch. well…love. i don’t want to imagine my life existing without scratching pencil to paper, slopping paint with a brush, or tracing the world in my eyes with a pen to the substrate. never do i want to feel that great hollowness of putting aside what i loved doing most — where i felt the most relaxed and deliriously happy — to start learning about the world and the day job, and making money and all these things that were important, yes, but not important enough to supersede anything else. to be without pen, pencil, brush, paper, paint — it would be as death to me.

i try everyday to draw or paint as i do an entry in my diary: many sketches are fantastically embarrassing, with all the faults of form and shading, and especially, importantly, wobbly in technical execution and concept. but they are as meditation, a way to focus and calm all the misdirected, harrassing energies of a day into one small task, itself made of small sounds and simple things. and once in a while, something great comes out of all the scribbles and scrawls, just one thing that makes all the previous, copious amounts of dungheap all the more worth it to trudge through.

and it feels great, until the next time you start, and that old familiar vermin called doubt creeps along to whisper its poison in your ear once again.

and many listen. i do too, every time i pick up a pencil and let it hover over a virgin sheet of paper. i parrot the same lines others utter: “i can’t draw a straight line,” “i suck,” or “i can’t draw like so and so.” oh, there is no end to beating myself until i become the dead horse and end up the pillow at the foot of a mafioso’s bed.

but there is also that moment that is necessary, imperative, for the stroke to begin its course. acknowledge the fear, the doubt, that it exists and will never go away, that sometimes it is bigger than you are, and that sometimes it will win. there are rare beings who travel this earth unfettered by self-doubt and filled with as much confidence as real ability (a fact i’m sure kanye west can attest to), leaving the rest of us to contend with the daily skirmishes of lives less (in)famous.

but doubt has its place, and it is not at the first stroke.

only the child you’d forgotten belongs there. remember? dig up an old photograph and take a closer look at the person you were. have you got it? good.

introduce yourself all over again.

tell this little person you would like to have a party with cookies and chocolate, paper and crayons. extend that invitation to yourself at ages 6, 8, 10, all the ages before you began to forget them and their lack of hesitation, before you began to fear what they would not.

and when doubt knocks at the door, take it outside and tell it that it’s not time for it to show up just yet, and that this party is just for us kids.