Evening guys! We're all used to this now, each and every year we get one more personal, reflective post here on my blog. Mostly as a type of therapy for me, to read my years previous post, before writing the new post and seeing how things have gone over the past 365 days. It's a refresh of priorities, personal goals, work targets and simply a check in on how life going. If my situation has changed, got better or worse, how my dreams of being an international videographer/all round legend are going. An off load of thoughts, all written down here on my blog and this year, it's no different, so let's cue the ramblings . . .
Where do I start, let's talk about the bank account. I guess, it's the simplest way to know if life has been good to me. I know money isn't the key to happiness but when I say - I have no money whatsoever, I mean it. I'm mean I'm looking right now and oh my, it makes for grim reading over there £4.30 plus Savings £0. I had to call my birthday evening short and put £40 in the car previously to going out to get me back to Glasgow rather than enjoy my evening with my pals. What the fuck am I doing?
Yes, my previous post to this is all about my latest escapades to the South of France & The Pyrenees, so I hear you ask, well it can't be all bad! No it's not but when it comes to working with brands or not having a job in weeks, with months of looking for something everyday - knowing your worth comes into it. Right now, I don't think I do, maybe it's a priority of mine to add straight to the top of my list of next year's lessons. Let's hope by then, I do know the value that I bring and charge for my time, efforts and talent appropriately!
When I say 'know your worth' the issue is, if I don't get a job in weeks then every time, I think I'm the problem. I then start doubting my work and feel all my films are rubbish. When a job opportunity does come my way, I'm so desperate for it that I sell myself cheap, wayyyy cheap! Just to secure the job as after all the no reply's, seen's and jobs that have simply slipped through my fingers the weeks previous. I then tell myself I NEED this and I'd do anything to get it. Cue me throwing a super low offer a brands way - lower than I need to live, to pay my bills just to secure the job (whatever that job may be to make it happen) selling myself cheap every SINGLE time! I pour money, time, my expertise all into coming up with a final project that I know other people in my field would charge thousands for. However, with me and my low offer, after I have worked tirelessly, I have either just broke even or earned a few hundred pounds.
It's a vicious circle, a nightmare of knowing I can bring a whole campaign to life, deliver a whole social media package, organise everything from a concept, a model (countless models in fact), filming teasers, campaign video's, shorts, ad's for specific items the brands sell. Organising props, drone work, cars, payments, collaborating with people, booking and organising to planning every little detail. Not only filming but visualising and creating the idea - being the director, the all rounder, coming up with the narrative, making all the elements work, all the cogs turning. Not to mentioning editing 12 hour days for weeks after the shoot, all on a laptop that I've had for the past five years, which can't even handle the programs I use anymore. What for?
Well... when I work it out in hours spent, its less than minimum wage!
Some days are harder than others, never having the money to go out and enjoy myself. Never having the money to actually not care, to go out for dinner, order that extra bottle of wine and go wherever the night takes me. Living hand to mouth to make my next rent - is this what I signed up for? I couldn't even afford to put petrol in the car to travel into town to shoot some photographs for this post, that's diabolical. I'm writing this now thinking I should set up a 'gofundme' page, ha!
"You can't fail at something if you keep going, as no one ever knows how close they are to success!"
Cheers for reading,
