What doesn't kill you.

The road of life is paved with many challenges. How we respond to them determines how far we can go.

One of my greatest challenges happened in my senior year of high school.

The plans were in place. I was all set to attend art college in the fall on a grant scholarship. Since childhood, I had always dreamed of being an artist of some kind and now it was time to get started.

Then the unthinkable happened. Just weeks before graduation, I was expelled.

And just like that, those plans, those dreams, faded from my horizon.

Those feelings of joy and optimism were replaced by feelings of disbelief and embarrassment. 

I lost my grants, scholarships, and just about any hope of being an artist on that day.

I did receive my diploma for continuation school, but there was no cap and gown. No pomp and circumstance. No parties or gifts. Just a small piece of paper verifying my degree and how one’s life can change in the flash of a moment.

My father, a lifelong teamster, landed me a job as a warehouseman, working the graveyard shift at a local spirit distillery. There I pulled orders, loaded trucks, scrubbed floors, and did just about whatever I could do to preserve my seniority as the lowest guy on the totem pole. I was the young kid in the midst of a group of teamster “lifers” — folks that, for the most part, worked in the same job for 30 or so years. It was not a job that required a lot of thinking either. You read an invoice, pulled a few bottles of booze from the rack, put them in the box and sent it down the conveyor belt for someone else to continue filling the order. If you finished early, you scrubbed floors. Or drove your forklift truck to the remote end of the warehouse just to kill time. This was my normal — night in, morning out. It was not the kind of job you looked forward to going to every day, and definitely not the job I dreamed of since childhood.

It was during this monotony that I realized that if I was ever going to live up to my creative potential, I had to do something about it. Fast.

That’s when it clicked. From that day forward I was a man on a mission, fueled by the creative dream that I let slip through my hands. I envisioned what success would have been like had I stayed the course as originally planned. But now I pictured it with greater clarity than ever before. I dedicated every second, every minute, to making it happen. For the next nine years, I went to school during the day, interned in the afternoons, and worked nights. Sleep was not an option. I earned scholarships, grants, and even borrowed money from friends to keep the dream alive. Eventually, I found a way to graduate at the top of my class from the art school I originally enrolled in.

Shortly after, I was working on Madison Avenue as an art director for a hot creative ad agency. And wouldn’t you know, my first account was Seagram’s Crown Royal — a product I got to know all too well those nine years as a warehouseman!

There were two paths I could have taken. Had I chosen to accept my fate, my life would be very different. But I didn’t. I rose to the challenge and am stronger because of it.

There’s a quote I try to live by: “Life is 10% what happens and 90% what you do about it.”

To all those who are currently at that fork in the road, with a huge obstacle standing before them, don’t let it stop you.

Instead, let it inspire you.