One of the most frequent questions I get from many people these days is, "How do you do it? How do you find time to keep a blog? How to you find time to be a parent? How do you work so much and function on so little sleep?" (I average about four hours a day)

    I blame statistics.

    I came into this career with big dreams and low expectations. I've managed to achieve many things but have taken very little opportunity to appreciate them because of self doubt.

    Artist, Gary Baseman, once came to my school when I was a student at the Art Center, College of Design in Pasadena and he told our class that less than 10% of us would be able to make any type of living doing art and even fewer would be able to do it full time. As a person who is often driven by the fear of failure, hearing this statistic simply terrified me. My teachers told me that the magic number was FIVE YEARS for a freelance artist. Just sit and do your work day after day, and before you know it, you're working as a freelance artist full time, more or less.

    That was statistically speaking.

    Fast forward to the Spring of 2001. I graduated from Art Center with honors. (It was no big deal really, lots of us did) I was terrified that I would never find a job. Although Art Center claimed an 80% job placement rate I was terrified that I would fall into the bottom 20%.

    Three weeks after graduation I landed my first full time job at a video game company called Treyarch where I spent six and a half years of my life in fear of losing my job.

    My true passion was to write and illustrate children's books for a living, but while reading Harold Underdown's blog, The Purple Crayon, I realized that the odds of getting published were very low. So, while I was working at the video game company I had big dreams of becoming a famous children's book author/illustrator, but with the low expectation that it could take years before I got a chance to break into the business, let alone publish one of my own stories.

    I got my first two book deal with Arthur A Levine Books in 2002 (One year after graduating from art school)

    I had big dreams that my first picture book, The Guild of Geniuses, would be a breakout hit, but statistics show that most first time author books end up as a dud.

    I was one of the duds.

    It was a big blow to my young untested ego. I don't handle criticism very well and it was because of that fact that I was suddenly too nervous to write my second book (Which eventually became Sidekicks)

    It might have to all do with my fear of failure.

    As he years went on I illustrated more books.... The Secret Life of Walter Kitty, The Otto Undercover Series, The Ghosts of Luckless Gulch, Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo, and I did all this while working at a video game company where I was constantly in fear of losing my job.

    In 2006, (five years after graduating from art school) "The Replacements", premiered on Disney Channel. It was an animated show which I had created. The odds of getting your own show is less than one percent. I was constantly in fear that it wouldn't go longer than one season so I stayed at my game job.

    It went on for about three seasons.

    2006 was also the same year I had my first kid....

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    ...You have no idea what that does to a person who has a fear of failure...

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    It was one year later, in 2007, I decided to leave video games and television to just work solely on books and be a parent. I was afraid of failing at many things in life but being a father was something I couldn't afford to screw up.I was gong to stick with one profession I was madly passionate about and do it well. I couldn't stop but think about the statistics Gary Baseman told us in art school. So I put all my fear and desperatio