The other day, for the first five or so minutes of one of our daily live walk and talks though the forest, I spoke what may have been the most coherent and compelling rant/sermon I’ve ever done but, for some reason, my mic wasn’t working on my phone and none of it went out to the listeners.
I can’t remember all of it, but the gist of it was—and this has come out of a lot of self-reflection over the past couple of years—those of us who are freelance creative professionals might need to think of ourselves more like department stores and less like boutiques. At least I do. What do I mean by that? A lot of the talk around being a freelance creative seems to center around the importance of having a singular brand and identity—which often begins with a clear declaration of who we are and what we do. This it where it gets tricky for me.
Over the course of my professional career, which really began after college in 1989, I’ve been a prop master, a milliner, a prop maker, a welder, a model maker, a salesman, a car stereo installer, a production assistant, a graphic designer, a web designer, a photoshop instructor, a Flash animator, an art director, a painter, a writer, and a podcaster. And those are just the things I’ve been paid to do. The list of the things I’m interested in or have explored for fun is exponentially longer. The point of all of this is that my life has been driven by curiosity and learning and my professional life has been about learning to do something long enough to get good at it before moving on to the next thing to learn. The end result of it is that I’m not just a this or a that. Sometimes I wish that I was able to identify and focus on just one thing. But I’m not. I’ve never been able to focus on a single thing that can be easily packaged, which is often what people want or at least expect when they ask the question, “So, what do you do?” which, honestly, I’ve never really felt like I’ve been able to adequately answer.
It’s impossible for me to sum up all that I do and all that I’m interested in doing into one concise answer as some sort of convenient shorthand that is both satisfying enough for the person asking the questions and comprehensive enough for me to feel like it describes everything. And that’s part of the challenge.
I’m never going to be known for just one thing because I’m never going to focus on just one thing long enough to be known for it and, by and large, I’m okay with that. I’ve always had massive respect for people who can do one thing really, really well, but I also know enough about myself to know that that’s just not the way I’m wired and it never will be. As Adrianne has said many times, diversity is one of my superpowers. Since I was a kid, my pattern has been to identify something to be interested in, deep dive it and become proficient at it or knowledgeable about it, then move on to the next thing and repeat. And for most of my life, that cycle has served me well. It has allowed me to learn and grow and I think it’s one of the reasons I can talk with and relate to pretty much anyone. Where it can get tricky is trying to figure out what to do with or how to manifest all of that knowledge and experience when an audience gets thrown into the mix.
I come up with ideas all the time. Sometimes it’s an idea for something I want to make or a subject or thing I want to learn more about—in fact there are notebooks, post-its, and random scraps of paper all over the house that will attest to this. But there’s another layer to consider when thinking about putting work out into the world and it goes beyond simply whether or not an audience will like it and that is “does it fit?” As in, “does it fit with the rest of what I do?” or “is it on brand?” which has become a trendy way to say it. So often I abandon pursuing ideas beyond a certain point because I’m worried that they don’t feel like me to an audience. But the reality is, they are all very much me. They are a reflection or maybe a distillation of a lifetime of hobbies, interests, and pursuits that haven’t always dovetailed together just so.
There’s basically an infinite amount of products to buy and content to look at but only a finite number of eyes and minutes in the day, and it’s become more challenging than ever to capture the attention of an audience whose attention span seems to be shrinking exponentially. In fact, research suggests that you have just seconds to capture a viewer’s attention before they move on. Plus, the pressure to keep what we make fresh and interesting and “on brand” can be overwhelming. I think we’ve all had comments in our social feeds that go something like, “That’s not why I’m following you” or “That’s not what I want to see from you.” And the thing is, there’s so much pressure to cave—to stop doing the things we want to do and do more of the things that we think will get us noticed. And some people do it. The problem with this approach for me—beyond potentially compromising on my creative integrity—is that we can’t control the whim of an audience and if an audience isn’t going to like a thing that I’ve put into the world, I would much rather that thing be something that I believe in and loved making.
We’re told that focus and consistency are key, right? After all, a jack of all trades is a master of none. And for some people, that may be true. But that’s not the whole quote. The full quote goes “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
I would rather cultivate and nurture a collection of ideas and a set of skills that celebrates my curiosity in whatever form or direction that takes—knowing that only a portion of it is going to land with an audience anyway—than limit myself to a fraction of what actually interests me. As I said earlier, I have massive respect for those people who can focus on one or two things and that’s what they’re known for. But that’s not me. My only criteria should be “do I want to see it in the world?” and “do I have the ability to pull it off?” After all, those are really the only things I have any control over.
Questions:
Are you a jack of all trades or a master of one? Or are you some combination of both?
If you’re a fan of movies, specifically the music and sound of movies, I can’t recommend two documentaries highly enough. Making Waves explores the history of sound and sound design in film and uses some of the most iconic movies in cinema history as examples. The second is called The Sound of 007 which, as you might guess, is a chronicle of the scores and theme songs from 60 years of Bond films.
Welcome to the world of multipotentialites! This is a good starting point: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/are-you-a-multipotentialite-what-to-do-when-you-have-many-interests/
Wise words again, Mister. Spot on!