The Little Boy’s Name
There once was a little boy with a great big family and a bigger name. His mother was the oldest of eleven children, and all his aunts and uncles readily adopted him as their new littlest brother. When the boy was old enough, his mother brought him to a school where he could learn new things and meet new friends. He hated it thoroughly. The other children were strange and loud and cruel, and all he wanted in the whole wide world was to go home to his warm little bed, and his favorite stuffed toy.
And, most of all, the boy wanted to escape his name.
The boy loved his name; his mother had picked it out just for him. However, it was a long name. Sometimes the other children would say his name wrong, taking parts out or adding parts in, which only made the boy more upset. Worst of all was his teacher, who told him to practice writing it. There were too many letters to learn, so the teacher pressed him to write his name shorter, incorrectly, to make it easier. It wasn't fair.
The boy waited for his teacher to look away and climbed right out the classroom window. He ran through the bright green grass and across the busy black street, all on his own. The boy's mother was, of course, very upset with him. He was made to return to school, and the window was locked shut to keep him from running away again. Out of options, and deeply frustrated with the situation, the boy relented and wrote his name the shorter, easier way that everyone around him insisted upon: “Tim.”
Yup, that’s me: Timothy Hansen.
I was never like other people. I had trouble making friends, mostly because I didn’t like being around others very much. I quickly learned to find other ways of passing time. Picture books were a particular favorite. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Green Eggs and Ham, The Giving Tree. These stories, along with the fiction of movies and video games, were my world. I grew up there.
It’s poetic, then, that my earliest memory of making anything was a picture book of my own. See, I had just found out from my mother that one of my favorite movies was an adaptation from a series of books (the name of which will remain unsaid due to the author’s later, though in hindsight predictable, decent into madness). To my HORROR, the books were entirely devoid of pictures.
Unwilling to let this stand, I “wrote” my own version of the story, complete with the highest quality MS Paint scribbles. I even made my first self-insert protagonist! His house was attacked on a “dark and stormy night” by his nemesis, forcing him and his family to flee. Anecdotally, the villain just so happened to share a name with a particularly annoying classmate of mine (tragically, the exact name now eludes me).
My sixth grade teacher tried teaching the class some of the basics of drawing, and I could not for the life of me wrap my head around it. Most vividly, I remember struggling to shade a sphere. My poor, neuro-divergent brain didn’t grasp even the basic goal of the exercise. Why would I make one side of the circle darker than the other? What’s so important about making sure the gradient curves, or ensuring that the transition from light to dark is smooth?
Most importantly to our story, the teacher went on to congratulate and showcase the more successful artworks from my class mates. One girl drew a detailed, beautifully rendered bunch of grapes with the techniques that were being taught. I felt…. Well, it’s hard to say. At the time I had a difficult time pinning down my emotions. I do know, however, that whatever I felt from the experience slowly took root and grew into a small obsession. I needed to figure out how it was done. I needed to make something that beautiful myself.
Near end of middle school, my mother got a divorce. It was her second, but to me it was the first; I was too young to remember my biological father. For circumstances I am not at liberty to discuss here, I was temporarily separated from the rest of my family while my mom worked out ways to support me and my younger siblings. Instead I stayed with my grandparents for several months. Now, I love my grandmother and grandfather. They’re both incredibly loving and creative, and my grandfather is legitimately one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. On the other hand, they are both old fashioned. Those days spent under their roof was a huge routine change for me. All the various ways I had learned to fill my days evaporated spontaneously leaving me bored, desperate for ways to occupy my attention. I would walk two miles to the library and spend the whole day reading in a small window nook overlooking the small city center. I also started to try drawing again, for the first time in years.
Somewhere along the line, that old obsession with art had lead to subconsciously figuring out what the hell shading was about. All at once, I was off. For the most part I drew simple, geometric designs as I explored all the various possibilities of these basic techniques. When I was reunited with my family later that year, I went back to MS paint, now with at least the beginnings of an understanding of what visual art is about.
Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It’s one of my favorite little tidbits. Basically, novices to a field consistently display immense overconfidence in said field. As you learn, you begin to fully appreciate just how much more there is to study, and your confidence drops. Even when one fully masters a discipline, their confidence almost never returns to the levels they were at as they were first starting their journey.
Sophomore year of Highschool, I took my first proper art class. I walked into the studio expecting to blow everyone else in room away, but of course, I didn’t. The teacher was immediately dismissive of my simple doodles, instantly lighting another fire under me. I had to be better. We drew everything you could imagine that year: bottles and bags, cities and shoelaces, animals, anime, and our own faces.
Near the end of the second semester I was working on a picture of one of my favorite characters at the time, and I decided to show it to a classmate. Her face was amazing. She took a quick glance, then returned with a genuine double-take, eyes widening. “Oh, wow. That… That’s actually really good.”
The next year I took a photography class, and the year after that I took graphic design. While the art class from the previous year had focused almost exclusively on the techniques of drawing, these classes greatly expanded my knowledge of visual media as a whole. I deepened my understanding of key concepts like composition, color theory, and shape language as I went. I also became comfortable with a whole new selection of software, the Adobe suite in particular. Though I no longer use Adobe products for the most part, these were skills that translated well into the other tools that I now use, such as GIMP and Krita.
Again, for reasons I cannot discuss here, I moved out the day I turned 18. Instantly, all motivation to create evaporated beneath my feet, sending me tumbling into eight years of creative block. It’s not that I made nothing; in fact I made a lot over this period. Rather, I lost the ability to keep myself working for long periods of time. As an unskilled worker, I was forced into relatively intense physical labor to keep food on the table. My first job was for Deseret Industries, a thrift store chain local to Utah, and in their infinite wisdom they immediately put me, with all my sensory issues, on the donation dock. I was expected to carry heavy loads constantly, regardless of weather conditions. This might seem easy to some, but for one with my particular neurological limitations, it was hell. I remember the rain most clearly of all. We were only rarely provided any equipment to help keep dry, leaving me to brave the frigid spring showers head on. The shock of it made me scream. I don’t think anyone heard me over the downpour.
I tried construction for a couple months before completely shutting down and having to quit. I then moved on to retail at the Dollar Tree, then a call center position for Bed Bath and Beyond. Covid came and went, and at last, I landed a position as a Walmart cashier. I have worked there for about three and a half years at the time of writing. At long last, I had found enough of a sense of familiarity that the anxiety and stress has returned to a manageable level.
So… I started to draw again.
I couldn’t tell you when, exactly, I decided to go for it. For as long as I can remember I have dreamed of being self-employed, a dream that has only deepened as I toiled under the influence of one corporate entity or another. Regardless, I did decide. And I started to re-sharpen my abilities. I was afraid to start, because I knew my skills had atrophied over my years of inaction. I didn’t want to re-invest all that time into re-learning things I should have already known. Luckily, I discovered that it’s much easier to re-learn a skill than the first time around.
I’m not the best artist in the world, but I don’t have to be. I can Draw. I can Impress. I can Make Things. And that’s all that matters in the end. I’m proud to sign my work, to put my name on it. After all, I love my name; my mother picked it out just for me.
-Timothy Hansen
Friday July 18th, 2025
