My Appreciation Of Bill Watterson
Finally, I found it! Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. Here are some bits that are quite inspiring: that he painted a copy of the Michelangelo's creation of Adam on the
ceiling of his dorm while he was at Kenyon College; that he drew cartoon-strips for 5 years without earning a cent; that he was sacked as a political cartoonist because he wasn't good enough; that he never yielded to corporate pressure to commercialise his cartoon-strips.
Here is Bill Watterson the creator.
ceiling of his dorm while he was at Kenyon College; that he drew cartoon-strips for 5 years without earning a cent; that he was sacked as a political cartoonist because he wasn't good enough; that he never yielded to corporate pressure to commercialise his cartoon-strips.
Here is Bill Watterson the creator.
Dip into his thoughts:
You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts
of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires
and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we
stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all
asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves
by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are.
Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many
kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school,
medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting
salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within
your own lifetime.
But having an enviable career is one thing, and being
a happy person is another.
Creating a life that reflects your values and
satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly
promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work
is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only
understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success.
Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue
other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a
career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living
up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human
worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep
climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what
you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee
you'll hear about them.
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but
it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
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