Crisis of Identity…
I’ve never been one to be totally truthful. I veil the majority of what I do in a little bit of secrecy. Smoke and mirrors, man behind the curtain – all that crap.
Very few people know who I really am (I can count them all on one hand) and I prefer it that way. I’m guarded and I feel out-of-place in crowds. Heck, I feel out of place in small groups of my friends.
So, over the years, I’ve built this online persona to keep myself comfortable in the business, art and professional world. I suspect a lot of you have. Mine is “Independent Studios.” I portray a corporate place. A studio where people work. I’ve done a lot of work (most of it for very little money,) and I’ve done it under a thin anonymity. And honestly, it’s attracted a clientele and work load that I’m not precisely comfortable with.
I’ve done a good job of keeping my client base small, working with a bunch of really nice people and decent organizations – but I’ve done it at the cost of doing what I really love to do – which is draw and dream and be weird and be funny and kind of out there.
If any of my clients read this – I’m NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU. I LOVE YOU.
I like what I do, but at my advanced age (38) I’ve come to the realization that I’m ready to move more towards doing what I love. I’ll keep doing the graphics thing in the corporate world – but I’ll be doing it to support my other habits. Rapidographs, paper, gouache, pencils, paintbrushes.
When you put out a corporate face, or you put out a portfolio of things that you’re not really all that fond of doing, that’s precisely what you’re going to get for future work.
Don’t get me wrong – designing another logo is not the worst thing in the world. Designing another brochure isn’t going to kill me. There are certainly a LOT worse things to do with 9 hours of my waking day – but there are also better things to do.
So: Show what you love and what you want to do. If you want to do logos, show logos. If you want to doodle and make art out of lists you find in shopping carts (yes, that’s one of my current projects,) SHOW IT. Don’t just show what you know will make money.
If you’re in the freelance game to make money, you’re in for a long haul. If you do what you love, show what you love, you’ll attract what you love. You can pay the bills, you can find clients, but you’ll also start building towards your ultimate goal of doing strictly what it is you decide is your “art.” And that makes all the difference in the world.
When you’re broke and worried about the power bill, at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did it on your terms, doing what you want to do.
So – what do you want to attract? What sort of work do you want to do? What are you passionate about?
Start showing that off.
All this also brings up few interesting questions:
- How honest do you want to be? Are you secure enough in yourself to clue people into the fact that you are just you and this is what you do?
- How available personally do you want to be? I don’t mean how often are you on i.m. – I mean how much of YOU are you willing to let out there?
- What do you want to do with your time?
- What do you want to do with your art?
- Are you ready to suffer the slings and arrows that might be tossed at you because folks don’t understand or dig what it is that you do?
- Are you confident that you’re good enough? (Personally, I don’t think this is an issue. You’re good enough to be you and you’re good enough to do what YOU do – not necessarily what I do, what the dude with the killer website does, what the artist next door does – but what YOU do.)
- What do YOU want to do? What excites you? Don’t you think that if you pursue those, you’ll be happier and that excitement will rub off on your work and eventually on your pocketbook?
- Do you want to wear a suit and tie to meetings?
- Do you want to be yourself and less of a business?
I’m certainly not saying that you don’t need to be professional. I’m not saying that there’s not value, both artistically and personally, in doing less-than-esoteric work. What I’m saying is doing what you do will always bring greater satisfaction than doing what people expect, what is safe or what is a known quantity.
To that end, I’ve decided that I’m going to be more myself. I’m going to pursue more of what I want. Independent Studios and AllAboutFreelance will continue, but they’ll be changed markedly. I want to do more of the things I feel I’ve been placed on Earth to do. Some days, it will be logos, other days it will be endlessly weird stuff with bits of paper and string and glue and Xacto knives.
So – it’s been real. Nice to have known you all.
Hey, I’m James…
