My heart raced a bit. I instantly knew what had happened. A few weeks before I had told a friend that he could donate some books of mine that had been sitting in his Los Angeles garage for eight years. The sketchbooks were among them, appropriately placed in a box marked “Art School Feelings.”
When I realized some guy named Will now had them, along with every intimate and potentially embarrassing thing I had put into them — my musings, fears, emotions, assorted drawings and stories that would now seem ancient — I cringed. My early 20s had been dark and depressed (an emotional state fueled by 9/11, George W. Bush and America’s wars for oil, oil and more oil) but entering art school at the age of 27 gave me new energy, and allowed me to channel that energy into something positive.
A few more text messages and 10 days later the box showed up in my brownstone’s hallway. When I opened it, I found seven of my notebooks. Since I had started art school relatively late in life, I was self-conscious about my skill set, convinced I was the worst student in my life drawing class. I obsessively drew in these sketchbooks in order to catch up and improve. And I loved it.
Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan