What is the Complete Package?

I live in South St. Petersburg, Florida, and whenever I make a trip downtown, I pass a gas station.

Most days, on the corner in front of that gas station, there is a very tall, rail-thin Black man. He frequently wears knee-high white socks, super-short runner shorts, a tank top, and a bright blue clown wig.

He stands on the corner next to a pilfered shopping cart, and whenever the light turns red, he walks down the row of cars, selling art.

The last time I saw him, something caught my attention.

In the cart, he had a large piece of cardboard, the kind that might have been used to wrap a dishwasher or dryer to protect it during shipping. On this piece of cardboard, he had drawn Beavis and Butt-Head.

Now, it should be noted that these were not perfect likenesses of Beavis and Butt-Head.

In reality, they looked more like a third- or fourth-grader had taken some crayons and markers and sketched out their best rendition of Beavis and Butt-Head.

And yet, in that moment, I had a brief impulse to buy his work.

Not because it was necessarily great art.

And not even because I particularly like Beavis and Butt-Head.

I wanted to support this person who was out there trying to do something. Trying to express himself. Trying to create something. Trying to make a dollar from his vision and effort.

There was something admirable about that.

Unfortunately, we have moved ever closer to becoming a cashless society, and I didn't have any money on me. I also had no idea what he wanted for the piece, because there were no prices listed.

So I drove by.

That was several weeks ago...

But here's the funny thing about art:

I'm still thinking about it.

I'm still thinking about that piece of cardboard sitting in that shopping cart.

And I still wish I had bought it.

Not because I think it was a masterpiece. Not because I think this man is going to become a famous artist, or that a piece of cardboard with Beavis and Butt-Head scratched onto it is ever going to hang in a gallery or sell for six figures. It's not going to become an "investment."

So why am I still thinking about it?

Because what moved me wasn't the artwork. It was the man, and the effort. The persistence. The willingness to just start...

He didn't have a gallery, a website, professional photos, an artist statement, or a publicist. He had a shopping cart, a piece of cardboard, and a bright blue clown wig. And he was out there doing the thing.

That's the part that stuck with me — because I spend a lot of time talking about what it means to build a sustainable creative career, and it's easy to let the conventional markers of success (fame, money, recognition, the right rooms) crowd out the more basic question of what success actually is.

Maybe it's waking up and making the thing you want to make. Maybe it's getting your work in front of one person. Maybe it's making that person stop, or smile, or think, or simply remember you.

By those measures, this man is a success. I'm proof of it — because weeks later, I'm still thinking about that piece of cardboard.

He had an impact on the world around him.

And isn't that the whole point of making things — reaching outside yourself, putting something in front of another human, and saying here, I made this? Sure, sometimes people walk right past. But sometimes it lands, and it sticks with them...

That man on the corner doesn't have to be famous, rich, or critically acclaimed to be an artist.

In that sense, he's exactly what I'm always teaching. He's the complete package — not because the art is extraordinary, but because he found a way to make it, put it out into the world, and connect.

I don't know if he'll ever get better at drawing, or sell a piece for real money, or have anyone write an article about him.

But he made something. And weeks later, somebody's still thinking about it, and him.

That's not nothing.

It might even be what this journey is about...