Real stories about real people in NFT, Crypto and the Metaverse.

#3 - The DarkMythst in his own words

*Faces of Web3 sat down to learn the story of the [DarkMythst](https://twitter.com/Darkmythst1). Here’s how it went.*

> ## ***“You cannot kill me in a way that matters.”***

The powerful quote above comes from a 2018 Tumblr post where a person asks a mushroom under gunpoint for the name of God. The mushroom replies by taunting its supremacy, enraging and terrifying the person.

![](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F984bc36e-3d32-4a19-9983-d8bb58781b20_949x862.png)

The quote has inspired [music](https://youtu.be/sFWVYFTrgP4) and spawned many instances of fanart and comic dramatizations. But it is difficult to explain this meaning to someone without them seeing [the quote](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/f0g344/holding_a_gun_to_a_mushroom/) itself.

In the same way, it is tough to tell a story like [The DarkMythst’s](http://darkmythst1/) — from studying to become a doctor to working on a bunch of Hollywood blockbusters and finally venturing to co-build one of the largest black NFT communities — while capturing its authenticity. For this reason, we decided to let him tell his story in his own words.

### **From medicine to graphics**

When I was six, my parents moved from Ghana to the United States. I loved my dad a lot, growing up. He was a virologist at the time, and I could often be found at his office, reading his science books. I was interested in anatomy and the science of molecular biology, and I would look into my dad’s electron microscope and ask myself questions like: What is a cell made of? Why does it have all of that stuff in there? But I was not only interested in science; I also loved drawing and painting. My dad would take me to competitions, and I’d win all the awards. Then, when I finished high school, I got into medical school and enjoyed the path I’d chosen for myself until two events changed my entire life.

![](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F237bd852-79f3-4b0e-9dc4-8c2947ee0c4c_1280x842.jpeg)

The DarkMythst with his grandfather in Ghana (Time period unknown)

First, the *Matrix* movie came out. I watched it, and the graphics completely blew my mind. The second event happened while on my way to deliver something to someone at school. I happened to walk into the wrong building, and it was a video production department. I saw the lights, the cameras, the people, and the graphics. My jaw dropped, and I immediately sought out the professor and bombarded him with questions.

My dad was destroyed when I went to his office the next day and said I was done with med school. Instead, I wanted to go into graphics and film. At first, he didn’t understand why I’d make such a drastic change after coming this far. And I just said I didn’t know. I walked in there and everything just opened up for me. I had never felt that way before; I had to do this. He was supportive even though he had his reservations. I assured him I would find a way to fuse art with science, whatever that meant.

Before I could do any graphic art, I was driving a forklift for a factory to put myself through school. I hated driving forklifts, so one day, while I was at work, I wondered if the company had a marketing department I could intern in. After finding out who the VP of Marketing was, I asked him to give me a little tour. At the time, I was thinking about how to get myself hired in the graphics design department. I saw that they had a video camera, and I told him, “You guys outsource your marketing, but you have a camera where you can do all of your stuff here.” I said I could help build their facility and studio even though I’d never touched a camera in my life. So he ended up saying, “We have a very big meeting with about 10

Sheila Darcey is creating a healing space in the Metaverse. 

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1\*WNUWExYq0P4TMm2j2YRRGg.jpeg)

Image by[ Frank Okoro](https://instagram.com/iamokoro_jnr?utm_medium=copy_link)

A series of unrelated events that I experienced in December 2021 left me longing for a change. The first one was a stubborn cough which had me choking and gasping for breath. After a series of tests, I discovered that I had COVID. I lived alone, so isolating myself wasn’t an impossible task. I needed to treat the physical symptoms as well as the despondent feeling that accompanied a COVID-19 diagnosis. In between feeling sorry for myself — largely because I couldn’t spend Christmas with my family or my boyfriend — and trying to work on [AfroDroids](https://www.afrodroids.io/), I had a lot of time to think about the NFT and Web 3 space, this time not in hasty terms. I viewed it, not just as a space for quick cash grabs via scams or rug pulls, but also as a space that afforded many of my friends their freedom.

In time, I began to ask myself important questions that would completely transform my thinking and the path I would carve out for myself moving forward.

* What can I do to give back to this space?
* How can I facilitate a noob’s entry into the space?
* What can I do to encourage these newbies to carry on?

The Web3 space, particularly the NFT space, is divided into three groups of people: the creators, the collectors and the community builders. Creators are the artists. The collectors are people who buy art to keep or flip, and the community builders are people who teach about Web3, maybe in Clubhouse or Twitter spaces.

I interviewed Sheila first because she fell into these three categories. Sheila is an artist, mental health advocate and an NFT and crypto enthusiast whose focus in the space is on creating a brand for arts, healing and mental health. She’s recently launched a book with exactly this goal in mind. Sheila’s story answered my question about carrying and pushing through. Albeit a little triggering for those who may have suffered some form of abuse, her story gave me warm hugs and made me feel like I was not alone. In turn, I’m sharing it with others who need it.

**Sheila’s story**

Right off the bat, we started talking about Sheila’s book, which just launched. It’s called *Sketch By Sketch: A simple daily drawing practice for emotional healing and transformation*. When Sheila told me, “Esther, the book is divinely guided,” I sat up straighter and asked what she meant. For Sheila, writing a book was never something she desired. Her response, along with the conversation that followed, took me through her journey into sketching, the NFT space, and how she ended up publishing her book.

Sheila grew up in Australia as the daughter of an Australian boxer and a Filipino mother. She had a rough start in life where, from ages 4 to 11, her environment was coloured with domestic violence and abuse. The resulting trauma often roused feelings of anger and deep sadness. She had been raised to find gratitude in every single thing in life, and so she found it hard to express those emotions, thinking them a betrayal of her upbringing.

“I had a lot of rage,” Sheila said. “I was very emotional, but I don’t know if I was ever sad for me \[or\] if I ever cried for myself until I started sketching again. It’s a different type of sadness when you look at yourself and go, "Wow, you went through a lot." What my sketching did for me was \[that\] the dialogue started happening internally, and I started to have compassion for myself. I gave myself permission to be angry.

“I was having a crisis of faith. I didn’t believe in anything bigger. I didn’t believe in God, I gave myself all the credit, but I do now. I know that there’s something bigger. You can call it God, you can call it the universe, you can call it whatever you want to call it, but there is something happening in my life that is stirring me, and I’m like take me wherever you want. I am going to be of service to the good; t