#childhood-influences

#childhood-influences

Last week, I bought a first edition management book for $150, even though the entire text is available online for free. It wasn't until my therapist asked me about my childhood relationship with books that things clicked. Growing up in a suburban town where the library was my escape, I remember desperately wanting to own the books I borrowed, to have something permanent that couldn't be taken back. Now, thirty years later, I'm still buying that feeling of security.

I was extremely thin. I'm not joking. I used to button my shirt all the way up, and had a bowl haircut. I was like a Rutger Hauer son. almost albino, very pale. And in 1969, my father won the National Lottery, and he became a millionaire, and he bought a house, and somebody told him that he needed a library, because he was now a cultured gentleman. So he bought a huge library, which he never visited, and I read everything in there.

Drawing on a natural curiosity cultivated in childhood, Aoki has come full circle on what captures her attention. Aoki says her younger self would be surprised that she's managed to carve out a life as a painter, since it wasn't really considered an option in her family. Sneaking it in as a double major, Aoki graduated from University of the Pacific in Stockton, with a BA in mathematics and studio art.

"Life can be a pretty rough raisin," he says, "so if I manage to distract someone from whatever they're going through or brighten up their day or remind them that it's okay to do what you like doing and have fun, even for a moment, then my job is done."