When do you make for yourself?
Full Stack Creator 006
* Sprinkling in images of nature and filming things
Welcome to letter six of Full Stack Creator. Thanks to everyone that has signed up and/or shared! It means a lot that you take the time.
This week I want to touch on creating, creating for one self and not others. When I first got into creating, I did it purely because I wanted to. It was an urge that was calling to me all the time. If I didn’t create, I didn’t feel complete. That feeling has not left me. The difference is, when I create for others, be it a full time job or a freelance client, I don’t feel fulfilled.
About five years ago I started taking on paid work, starting with a one off photo gig and eventually leading to a regular video clientele. The all encompassed feeling of this is great because you are recognized as a professional and people are willing to pay you for your work and potentially your art. The bad part is that when you are getting paid to create for someone else, you lose agency over said work. I had to do my work more for my clients than myself. This led me to losing my identity as an artist and pigeon-holing myself into work that I never intended to pursue.
This is going to be weird to say, but thanks to COVID I have been able to pause client work. Luckily, I do have a day job where I was making 80% of my yearly income. Now that my day job is 100% of my income, I am excited and nervous. Excited, because when I create, I create my ideas and visions, not others'. But this also means that I am in debt to my day job. Most people are in debt to their job, they owe them for their salary and benefits.
This also means that I can pause from creating too. Over the last few months, like most people right now, I am not very motivated to make. I know that this is not directly due to COVID, but rather due to changes coming to my life in the near future. I will talk about this more as it comes closer.
I am not pausing creating because I want to, really. But more so because I need time to rest. I have been non-stop moving forward and I haven’t had time to stop and think. Over the last few weeks I have been learning more than ever. If you know me well, you know that I love to learn new things, constantly taking in knowledge. For most people rest means relaxation on a beach. For me, it is absorbing. That could be via learning or taking in my surroundings. Since my surroundings in the past five months have been my apartment, I think I have taken all I can.
Don’t get me wrong, I have created some things, but nothing that I would call art, or truly important. I made an Instagram UI Kit for Figma and Adobe XD. These were actually featured on Undraw's blog last week!
All of this was to say, I am free to make for myself! I still want it to be my main source of income someday. Admittedly, I know this will come with client work. My intention is to make my work so good, that my clients will want my work, not for me to do theirs.
Speaking of taking time to consume rather than create, are you all into podcasts? I have been a huge podcast listener for years. I normally listen to hours of podcasts a week. Ever since being home-bound, I am finding it harder than ever to make time to listen. I try to listen while working, but I tend to have work that needs me to focus and I like to provide all my attention to my podcasts. All of this adds up to me being three months behind on podcasts. I still move one or two to the top as they come up and listen to them weekly, but I’ve had some in queue for over five months. Have you had the same issue since being home-bound?
Other news:
If you are a nerd like me and love Twitter, you’ll be happy to know that Twitter is launching a new API, Twitter API 2.0!. To some, this means nothing, but this means a lot to me. This means that third party services and apps can have full access to Twitter's API again! This means that you will not be forced into using the default Twitter app. So stoked for this!
Alternatively, Twitter also had a massive breach this week... The Verge has a ton of coverage on this, so check out their work if you’d like to know more. https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/16/21327769/twitter-bitcoin-scam-news-updates