The smallest things can alter the course of history. Minecraft Dungeons may have sparked one of those moments for me.

When a dungeon-crawling game developed by Mojang and Double Eleven was released on May 26, 2020, of course I wanted to buy it. I didn't get it right away, because I had no personal way of online payment, so my thoughts were as follow: Put so much effort into a fantastic pitch directed to my mother, that she would use her card for me to make the purchase. Of course this included me paying for it as well, the only thing really needed was her card's power of online transactions.
I don't see why more children don't take this approach of educated reasoning when asking for things from parents. It works wonders.
As part of this pitch, I decided to make the Minecraft Dungeons main villain, the Arch Illager. He is a short little dude with a fantastic backstory that's worth watching. Rather than being truly eveil, he ends up corrupted by a magic stone, blah blah blah. More importantly, I made him out of cardboard.

Sure that's cool and all, but how was this significant besides getting you a video game you played less than a dozen times?
This is where it gets good.
You see, the Arch Illager I made was crude at best. It was made with random paints and brushes I found in our family supplies, and was overall lacking detail. But it was a start.
But even the start wasn't the significant part. The significant part came with my ego saying "dude. You should take this to school and show it off so everyone can compliment you" because at the time, I didn't have social media to boost it.
When I got to school, all went well, people complimenting it and making me feel great about myself. And then someone asked how much to buy it.
"Fifteen bucks" I said, and it was a deal.
They bought the scrappy Arch Illager from me that day, and being the little business man I am, I capitalised on it. I immediately went asking people if they wanted me to make a figurine of them, and that inititiated more, similarly crude creations. These were detailed with new paints and brushes I bought from Walmart using my fifteen dollars.
The 50 cent paints still offer me a vast range of colors for next to nothing. I bought every color.

These I sold for fifteen bucks, and they took me 3-4 hours each to make. Then I sold more, and more, earning enough money to buy an iphone, then more to buy a computer, then more to temporarily fill a display case at a local library, then more, then more, then more.

Now, my go-to gift is something along this style: