I’ll take you back to early nineties where it all started. Sporting baggy jeans, big bangs and a fluorescent windbreaker. Paula Abdul’s song, Straight Up, is blaring on my yellow Walkman. I had just celebrated my eleventh birthday. The fall air is crisp. We’re kicking off a new school year and I am pumped to be in a class with my BFFs. 

I don’t care much for mathematics or sciences. I am definitely more drawn to the arts. I doodle incessantly. I am a visual learner. And for as long as I can remember I DREAM about being an actress. I should have clued in then that I was destined to live a creative life!

But, primary school education didn’t really encourage me to hone my artistic skills. I was made to believe that art and drama classes were for fun, and that the real jobs came from core classes such as math and science. Unbeknownst to me, my future was being scripted. The FEAR of the starving artist was being ingrained so deeply in my mind.

“If...