I have been an artist for as long as I can remember, during my first years most of my artistic education was self-taught, it was until college that I was able to attend more "formal art classes". As an artist in real life I couldn't pursue it full time, so my artistic career was more like an after-work thought than a full time career. That changed in January 2022, after a very difficult job and mental crisis I decided to quit my job (used to work in finance with a very good paying salary and benefits) I couldn't live like that anymore doing something that I didn't love not only was draining my soul but affecting my mental health as well being a high stress profession. I remember to be incredibly scared, almost paralyzed with fear, but then I thought: "What if someone would tell me that I only had a year to live?" what I would do with my life if that were the case?, will I still accept to live like that? or would I take the jump of my life and changed it forever? now, I didn't make the jump blindly, I made sure to plan for it financially and then take the steps to take care of my mental health (took therapy) and since I didn't know how to make art digitally (I only used to paint and draw using real brushes and canvases) I made a plan to enroll in online courses to learn how to use software tools (Photoshop, Illustrator) to began doing digital art. So I did it and joined the NFT community on March of 2022, not knowing anyone or anyone knowing who I was I started to connect with as many artists as I could, I entered to every art contest I could lay my eyes on, I replied to everything so people would recognize me more and more, I did it with a genuine and sincere desire to connect and learn from other artists. For me the creation of art is the deep desire to connect and express thoughts, ideas and emotions with others, art has this special power to help us discover something we didn't know we have. So here we are, still doing art, way poorer but way happier, but I really didn't do this for the pure pursuit of money, mostly as a way to reconnect with myself, to understand what is important to me, to be able to say at the end of this life: "Yes, I had the fortune and the privilege to were able to do what I loved the most and I will never regret that decision". At the end of the day we only have one shot at this life, shouldn't we do everything in our power to live it in our own terms?