Remember your childhood dreams? I used to want to be a rock-star, an archeologist and a comic book writer. As I grew I realized I wasn’t gifted in music (I took and failed at a large array of music classes from chorus to keyboard), archeology required years of study for a field that there’s very little money to be made in (although I’ve help kickstart a virtual archeology sim, and one day, I’ll go volunteer to dig in the dirt (probably two days of that will be enough, lol)) but writing comics was a bug in my ear that never really left.

As you may know, in the 90’s I successful ‘broke’ into the industry writing, initially, backstories for Captain Canuck, and then did a couple months worth of his daily newspaper strip. But the 90’s also saw the crash of the industry, several promising leads and my work on Captain Canuck just disappeared as all of the companies I was in talks with folded. Far more talented and experienced writers than I were desperately seeking work, and the direction remaining publishers wanted to take my property (sex-plotation), wasn’t acceptable to me. Coupled with a family crisis – I abandoned that dream as well.

Perhaps you have as well. Life just… gets in the way. At least, it does if you let it. I have very few regrets, but stopping at that point, even though it was HARD finding work as a comic writer at that time, even though it allowed me to focus on my family situation, it was a mistake, I wouldn’t repeat now. At the time, I didn’t think I had a choice. It felt like my kids vs my budding career.

Years later, I dated a lawyer who was just making partner at that time. When she was that same age, also left to take care of her kids, she buckled down, worked a full-time job to help pay her way through law school, and became a lawyer – all while being a single mom. Dang, I thought, and her kids aren’t messed up or resentful. I did have a choice, it was just a much harder one to make.

And that’s the rub, life will always get in the way of our dreams. We just have to push back, say no, this is what I’m about, and make the hard choices, and do the hard work required to bring those dreams from infancy, where they are fragile and super dependent to adulthood, where they take on a life of their own. My new wife and I have done that now with our home businesses, and now I’m committed to doing it with Brute.

And this week, here are the fruits of that labour:

Yep, these are the first ten pages of completed art for Brute #2. The rest isn’t far behind! It’s coming. And thanks you to, we’re making this dream a reality! But if I can do it, so can you. What dreams have you let go of, that you can commit to now saying – I’ve got this!