This dream drags up old memories of being a kid and fishing in places I definitely wasn’t supposed to be fishing. Not because it was dangerous. Not because it hurt anyone. But because somewhere, some adult decided that joy in the wrong postcode equals crime. Add a fishing rod, a bit of curiosity, and a monster friend, and suddenly you’re public enemy number one.
I certainly find that trying to capture my dreams is much like trying to catch that elusive fish, That’s where AI comes in. Not as some soulless robot overlord, but as a creative collaborator, a fast-moving net I throw into my subconscious river before the weird fish slip away and go live their best lives without me.
I remember adults scolding kids for doing “wrong” things that weren’t really wrong at all, just fun, imaginative, mildly inconvenient to their fragile sense of control. And even back then I remember wondering what kind of internal dumpster fire must have been raging in their lives to make them so aggressive toward kids simply existing and enjoying themselves.
There’s something deeply sad about adults who’ve forgotten how to play. Who see imagination as disruption instead of oxygen. Who treat curiosity like a threat and joy like a personal attack. Kids aren’t the problem. The systems are. Burnout is. The slow spiritual death that happens when you replace wonder with rules and call it maturity.
Big Trouble isn’t really about fishing.
It’s about freedom. It’s about walking through life with your creativity beside you — big, weird, loyal — even when authority points its finger and tells you you’re doing life wrong.
I still think adults shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. Better yet, they should stop sweating altogether and go sit in the shade of a tree and remember what it felt like to make a stick into a sword, a monster into a friend, and a bridge into an adventure. Or at the very least, stop yelling at kids who already know something they’ve forgotten: life is supposed to be strange, playful, and alive and not a bloody compliance exercise.
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
Now, my name. Andy. Not Andrew. Andrew is for the banks, the tax office, and people who scold me. Andrew is what gets printed on forms. Andy is what gets printed on drawings, books, walls and shirts.
Andrew comes from the Greek Andreas, meaning “manly” or “warrior,” which is hilarious because Andy feels less like a warrior and more like a barefoot hippy wandering through dreamlands with a sketchbook and a monster friend, occasionally throwing rocks at authority just to see what happens.
Andy is the softer edge of Andrew. The creative edge. The edge that doesn’t salute authority, it questions it, sketches it, turns it into a story, and sometimes makes it look ridiculous in a top hat.
Andy is the name I use when I want to remember who I actually am.
Big Trouble is now available as a one-of-one art print – $110AUD
Print size is 30.5 cm by 30.5 cm, printed on lightly textured 100% cotton paper, with a 3–5 cm white border to make framing easy and clean. One of a kind. One moment pulled out of a dream before the world tried to tame it.
If you’ve ever been told you were “doing it wrong” when you were actually doing it
beautifully, this one’s for you.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 