I wanted to write this post to talk about doubling back in life.
In the future, I imagine looking back on this post and thinking about how the time I spent going off on tangents in life wasn’t a waste and that things all worked out in the end & the journey made me a better person.
Jumping in, I started off out of high school being dead set on becoming a successful filmmaker/video editor. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to get there, exactly what I was going to do for work, or what exactly I wanted to make but I knew that I wanted to become financially successful off of using a camera and video editing software.
This mindset lasted for around 3 years before a person in my life introduced me to making music.
I didn’t stop making video, but at this point my mindset reoriented to wanting to make music for fun & make money off video.
I viewed video as an easier way to succeed financially but music as a more enjoyable art form to create.
The reason I viewed music this way is because I saw it as requiring less busy work to create than video, not that it’s easier but that the process to create music is not as much of a slog as I’d come to understand properly creating a film was.
So, what happened was that while I began building up my music skills I wasn’t really focused on video. I guess I viewed this as a temporary detour from my eventual financial success in video and thought that once I wrapped my mind around music to a certain point I could casually work on that start making money in video.
That lasted for about 2 years, then around the start of this year I thought I had it all figured out.
I was starting to make some music I was happy enough with to release and I was going to cut down my hours at my job in order to start making money in video, eventually quitting the job altogether.
So, here we are 7 months later, where am I at now?
I’ve made about 1000 in video since the start of the year, a decent amount of money to buy a few extra material things but enough to live off of? notsomuch.
Where does that leave me? ……. In the middle of another setback. I had some people close to me in my ear for the last few years telling me I should drop video production and, “Learn How To Code” I never disagreed with their logic but always thought by this point I would have succeeded in a more significant financial way in video production.
But here I am, 24 years old and finally ready to invest time in trying out programming.
I’ve been practicing for about a month now and think at the rate I’m going it’ll realistically be 6-12 months before I can get an entry level job.
The situation I’m trying to work towards is using programming as a way to make consistent money while slowly racking up more video production experience.
A lesson I learned with doing video production work for people is that it’s really tough to guarantee an artistic product a client will be happy with. I like making video but because of this I’d rather make videos for people as an optional extra side pursuit & not rely on it for full time income.
Because of this I think it’s worth setting myself back for awhile in order to learn a new skill.
I don’t have it all figured out by any means and never will, but in the future if I do I hope someone reads this and sees that I was in a similar spot to them but through some twists and turns everything came together in the end.
A few months back an older friend said to me that in your 20’s the important thing is just to show up, to actually get out of bed in the morning and do something, anything. You might not end up where you originally intended but eventually, if you’re living clean & not wasting your life/money partying things will come together for you.
I agree with him & think the reality is that many people who are on the right track don’t actually get to that comfortable spot in the world till closer to age 30 and getting there often requires a few significant setbacks.
dontstresstwomuch.