Story Excerpt

Penelope

About me? There's not really much to tell. I grew up in La Réunion with my dad and brothers, and a few step-mothers, but non of them lasted long enough of did enough to really be counted. I went to Elementary School; then Junior High, and finally, you guessed it, High School! There are good and bad memories mixed in with all of those, like my oldest brother having to go into rehab, and my other brother crashing into a light pole when he was hammered and nearly dying, but those don't really involve me so much, even if I was there, so no going on and on about those.

I think the best reason for why I don't really have anything interesting to say is because I never really did all that much, logically. My social life consisted of playing games with my brothers and later hanging out with Jareth and Ally, but other than just enjoying my time with them the only thing I really did was draw. Well, that is, draw, read, play video games and browse the internet, but I still manage to fill the majority of my free time with it. Thankfully I was able to use that ability to make money. After High School I didn't really feel the urge to go on to college so I decided to get a job straight away. The only thing I was really all that good at was drawing, and I know I could have gotten some menial job in food service or something like that, but I would've gone crazy after a while, so I decided to find a job where I could put my skills to some use. After some searching around I found a few places that could use a good artist, so I whipped up a resumé and a small portfolio of my work, mailed it out, and waited, that is, hoped, for the phone calls. I sent out twelve resumés. After a week I had only gotten four phone calls, one of which was only for them to basically laugh at me. So I went, did three interviews, and hoped that they had found me to be what they wanted.

One of the places I had applied at was an ad agency, it was that agency that decided to try me out. The pay was shitty, but it was enough to pay rent, the bills, and any other small expenses I had, and of course food. I may have had to eat nothing but ramen at lunch for months, but hey, you gotta start somewhere. The most important thing though was that I actually enjoyed it. When I first decided to make drawing my work as well as my pleasure I was worried it would make it so that it stopped being fun for me, and it may do that for other people, but luckily for me my worries ended up being nothing.

I worked there for eight years total. The clients I did the graphic design work for said my stuff was good, and more people started asking for me. After about a year I got a substantial raise. I could upgrade from Ramen to Macaroni! After working there for about six years my work was actually in demand to the point that I could negotiate for higher pay, which I'm convinced was some sort of act of God. Doing the calculations later on at my place I figured out that it was possible for me to open my own office, at least if demand kept up as it was.
Demand increased, I saved my money, I looked into what it would take to run my own business, and got approved for loans with spectacularly horrible rates. After getting the funding I finally said goodbye to the ad agency and opened my office, and, thank god, business kept on going. My office opened just in time for the Christmas rush, so I'll just need to wait and see if that's the only reason I haven't already failed horribly, but hey, I have some time to relax now that I'm done AND finished with those projects. Crap, I need to do some shopping. I shudder at the thought, what with it only being five days till. Here's to hoping for a Merry Christmas.