If there is one thing that each of us is better at than anyone else, it is being us. Fact: no one can be you better than you, and if you can monetize that, you win, as you will have no competition. Essentially, we really have no choice other than to strive to be who we are as fully as possible. Age helps in this area, as we hopefully have learned to lessen our reactivity towards or against our parents, our work, family, etc. Attention: this does not give us license to be jerks; there is a difference between owning who you are and being an affront to others. It also is not an excuse to stay stuck in the “it’s just who I am” mode of self-fossilization. We change with the times, and with our life stage.
In my last career as a photographer, the key to success was to produce work with unique authorship, meaning your work could be recognized as being yours and yours alone. If the look aligned with whatever the current styles were, you hit it big; if clients wanted it, they had to go to you. Only a handful of photographers were ever in this position at any given moment. Beyond the vagaries of the market, we photographers were often distracted by whatever shiny new object we happened to see, swerving towards it, losing ourselves in the process. It would be as if someone with a firm sense of individual style suddenly became enraptured with the latest at Forever 21. We were young, is the excuse I tell myself.
I still sometimes get lost in the noise and miss the signal, but I get it right now more than I used to. It is a constant sensing of what feels right now; not what I used to do nor what others are doing. Knowing who we are is of tremendous value. For most of us, sensing of self needs space and downtime, when we are not doing anything — no TV, no social media, nothing except maybe a walk in nature. For others, me included, it is an action: doing a thing that will get me to stop thinking about my immediate day-to-day, maybe change my brain chemistry bit, as when I exercise hard, ski ridiculously fast, struggle in the language of another country. Whatever works for you, do it. This is the moment we get to be who we were meant to be; time is short and if not now, when? If there is a regret I fear, it would be getting to the end and never owning the person I genuinely am.
Onward and upward,
David
