My name is Tariq Gangari and I am a freelance digital designer. Since I can remember I was always the kid that was extra when it came to my homework.

When other kids sketched their creative homework in their sketch book, I was creating 3D scenes using multiple paper sources. I remember one day I used that clear OHP paper to create perspective and depth if you tilted the book and looked at it from just the right angle.

Yeah I was extra, but knowing my brain worked differently to my peers gave me a buzz even at 12 years old.

Fast forward a few decades and I honed my craft into the digital field. But it didn't fall into my lap...

Anyone who is a freelance designer or a creative person in any capacity can understand the baggage that comes with the craft.

Peculiar sleeping patterns, desperation for distractions, doubting your abilities, questioning your career choices and raiding the refrigerator at 2am.

I don't think there are many other professions where we doubt and question our abilities quite like creative folk do. Whilst it can be a spiral into procrastination it can also be viewed as the very trait that makes us special.

In my college years and well into my 20's there was no place for me as a fresh faced Marketing graduate. Being that awkward introverted creative type, trying to get my foot in the door at a fast paced marketing office just wasn't going to happen. Especially during a recession year.

So I figured I would spend the next few years trying to find my calling, to learn how I could market myself, not someone or something else, but me. In the spring of 2012 I sold my ole' reliable 2001 Ford Focus. I saved up what little money I was making at my grocery store job and decided I was going to go travelling.

I was going to cycle down the east coast of the USA, starting out in Boston and ending up in Miami. Because why not, right?

I bought myself a new computer and self taught myself how to develop a website to blog about my adventure. I posted my story to social media and used the adventure as a vehicle to raise awareness of an arthritis condition I had developed in High School. Before I knew it, my story was getting regional coverage in the news and national arthritis news outlets.

You can read my full state-by-state blog on my Boston to Miami page. But it took 33 days to cycle the eastern coast of USA. I spent 3 months in the US, writing, designing, networking, making life-long friends and really pushing through some personal barriers that I had.

I came back a different person and saw the world differently. I realised that I had been in my comfort zone for a few years which was a safe place, a comfortable haven but nothing was growing there.

Ultimately my newfound mindset and openness to the world landed me my first office job and from there I continued to hone my craft and more importantly have belief in what I wanted to do.

Some years later, Daddysnack was born!