As mentioned in my post “The History of My Dream Job”, one of the most repeated FAQs to children is “what do you want to be?” And as we get older, this never fades – in fact, it becomes more frequent, and more demanding. The pressure builds on coming-of-age tweens and teenagers to find a field or niche that fits like a glove with their personal passions and loves. After all, Confucius said:
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
The truth is, not always the passions children have will align with the reality of the job market, the industries that correspond to their passions, and the economical state of the province/state that they are living in. Dare I say it, most of the time it doesn’t align, and you’ll find yourself scattered trying to figure life out with the “alignment dream”.
This was a reality that I had to face head-on with my own dreams of becoming a photographer, visual effects artist, and cinematographer/filmmaker. Photography wasn’t the first dream job, but it definitely was one of the most passionate ones. Ever since I got my first camera at age 7 – a Kodak Easyshare – I just enjoyed snapping photos of whatever I found unique and interesting. This changed in 2009 when my dad bought me my first digital camera – a FujiFilm FinePix S700. I learned how to use a lot of the common basic functions of digital photography – holding the camera super still, flash/no flash, zooming in and out, transferring JPEG files to a computer, and learning about formatting and cropping. It was a lot of fun.
A big part of the joy of photography was simply being able to capture the visual form of a moment that evoked emotion – awe, wonder, mystery, etc. The poses of animals were also fun to capture, albeit difficult at times.
After saving up from a part-time, under-the-table job, I got another camera in 2015 – this time a Canon PowerShot SX60HS, which I still have. I began photographing again with a sole focus on nature – the flora and fauna of parks. But I was also all over the place, what with trying to learn Adobe Creative Suite software and attending virtual high school too.
After Effects was one software that I started to pick up on fairly quickly. I learned how to use certain effects by following tutorials to the T, and started coming up with some interesting designs. Often they were random, and mostly intros or outros inspired by YouTubers. The one effect that I took a keen interest in was audio visualizers. After seeing it so often on videos for no-copyright music, I was excited to be able to make my own. So much effort went into dabbling in various plugins and effects that I fried the CPU and GPU of three laptops – an Asus X53E and two 2011 MacBook Pros, costing my father big dollars in the process.
In 2017, my passions were taken to the next level. I tried animating positions of 3D objects and learned how to use green screen with some dollar-store Bristol board and an LED light strip I’d bought the autumn before. The real game-changer was when I started literally getting absorbed by cinematography YouTubers – DevinSuperTramp, Parker Walbeck, Peter McKinnon, PotatoJet, DSLR Video Shooter, the list goes on. I was enamored with all the amazing cool equipment they used, the places they were able to go, and the creative process of filming and editing amazing footage. Until the ugly truth of costs, the difficulty of finding clients, self-control in the face of toxicity, the significant limitations of the rulings and creeds of the Islamic faith… all of it weighed down on me. Being the supportive, loving father he always is, my dad encouraged me to try software development to fund my passion, but I just could not do it. Heck, one day when he asked me to watch a YouTube playlist of iOS Swift tutorials and finish it when he returned from work, I came down with an anxiety attack that left me on the bed shaking and crying from a burning sensation all over my skin.
My photography endeavors continued, but I failed to boost my knowledge of photography to the next level. All I did was get the bare bones info (i.e.: add lighting from both sides and make it soft). After Effects came to a close later that year when my 2nd MacBook Pro’s GPU died. It took my father 18 months of penny-pinching to get me a 27″ iMac.
For the next few years I focused on making art in Photoshop and writing fanfiction – the only other things I was good at. I did eventually learn and attain a level of familiarity and comfort with HTML and CSS. Starting in 2018, I was requested to make event posters for an Islamic missionary non-profit organization, from which I gained valuable knowledge and experience in graphic design with Sketch and Adobe XD.
In fall of 2018, I dismantled my cardboard lightbox and threw it in the trash. I finally quit trying to attain my videography dreams towards the end of 2019 and kept photography as a hobby, snapping photos of local flora and fauna only. Later that year, I discovered how to locally configure MAMP (the MacOS version of XAMPP) and started learning WordPress. The global COVID-19 lockdown of spring and summer 2020 finally allowed the big dreamer part of my brain to reset to factory settings – for the most part. I realized that my writing skills could be used for creativity instead of cinematography, so I started writing a few blog posts and kept on building up novel and fanfiction stories. Art was still there too, so I brought it back and started making photomanipulation wallpapers again. I still had other non-career aspirations, but I’ll talk about that another time. You could say that hindsight really was 20-20. I went from just snapping photos and browsing the Internet, to trying to chase a dream career path that was too competitive, too saturated, and too expensive for me to be able to even remotely afford – all off of watching some YouTubers, to building WordPress websites for my dad’s fellow Muslim brothers so I could afford to buy groceries when my dad’s workplace robbed him of a significant portion of hours and pay. Now I’m writing blog posts like these, and I hardly ever take photographs nowadays – just random nature shots with my smartphone.
So as you can see I’ve ambitiously dabbled in a lot of areas of digital visual creative mediums over the years. Now I’m not 100% done with cameras and video production – I still like it, but this whole journey has taught me a couple truths that I believe are crucially important to know and remember. As much as it is good to be determined and to work hard to achieve a goal, you should constantly observe at the bigger picture of your life, the state that you’re in, and staying knowledgeable and up-to-date on the current state of career fields and niches BEFORE chasing a dream.
Focus on what you can do within the current state of your finances, and work out a range to which you can increase your income and set a target. Determine feasibility by weighing the options (costs, time, daily and weekly schedules, mental health, etc.) of pursuing one career path to fund another. Sometimes when looking for a dream job, it’s best not to focus on what you desire for yourself, but what you can do for others with your universally applicable skills. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and don’t be ashamed of leaving things that were enjoyable but not viable as a career. And being content with the small things you are able to be creative in by using what tools you already have, will keep you from setting unreasonable goals and unattainable dreams.