It was a dark and not so stormy night at the Burbank AAA Auto Club. In late March 2014, I was in my Junior Year of high school and was attending a make-up Driver's Ed class. But this wasn't just any regular class - it was the class mid-term! Not only was this my most hated class (even though it wasn't even in my regular school curriculum!), but I could not be more nervous to take another test.
There was just something about learning to drive that really made me nervous. Maybe it was that it represented the next step into adulthood, or the fact that I deal with anxiety problems and always feared the worst happening on the road. But nonetheless I didn't study hard enough for this thing anyway! So before the test started I did one of the few things that calmed me down - drawing.
I started doodling in my study guide that I brought with me to cram before the test, and I just started drawing little tornados and stacks of smoke. I connected the dots and thought...what if I put a body on that smoke? And before I knew it, thoughts of Aladdin's Genie and epic Arabian mythology came to my mind. This would be the third character that I had created, but my first book. I saw so much potential for a jinn character! I mean think about! Besides Genie from Aladdin...where else in our popular culture is there a well-known jinn character?
When I finally got to USC and declared a Drawing Minor, I had the incredible opportunity to take a "Comics Project" class in which I would make a 15-page comic about anything that I wanted. And before I knew it, I was living my dream - writing and drawing my very first comic book that I could share with the world. In December of 2018, I printed my very first copies of Jinnboy: Awakening #1 and unapologetically squealed and jumped for joy in USC Roski's Galen Printing Lab when I stitched my first issue together.
The feeling you get when you take one step closer to living the life you have imagined is like no other. Keep pushing. Keep working. Keep striving to greatness and you will awaken the best version of yourself.
