3 Things I Pondered Today
1. Is your life plan your own or created by another person?
2. What do you want to do moving forward?
3. What are you good at?
Today one of my favorite authors Paulo Coelho posted a tweet that said “Many people believe that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person.” As I write this it is father’s day. I kind of had this moment of thinking about my own father who passed away when I was in high school. It’s hard to think that he was only around for 1/2 my life but it is the reality of it. In that small amount of time he taught me a bunch of stuff however might have planet plan seeds that weren’t my own.
For example when I was younger he really pushed me into swimming trying to get me to be an olympic swimmer I didn’t want to be and by the time I started high school I decided to end my swimming career. I burnt out. I also had a seed planted about becoming a film director. Which I’m not sure if I would have done that if it wasn’t for that seed. I had another seed of having to go to a state college for my prepaid set up for me. If they didn’t have prepaid college I wouldn’t have been able to afford to go. I knew that I had to go to school in Florida to be able to afford it even though I always had my heart set on attending music school or something similar.
I ended up going to college for filmmaking which I have always had some dissatisfaction going to. I think if I had been able to pick something for myself I would have went into music. My entire life music was the only “hobby” I did on my own. Even in film school my favorite part was sound design, writing and mixing. I loved being in the foley room and doing voice overs. If I didn’t go to school for music it would have been for animation. I did have a goal of attending film school however the more I think about the why it was knowing that’s what my dad wanted.
When reflecting on the tweet from Coelho today I sat there and wondered is my plan something I created for myself or was it placed in front of me? This was a good question. At the current moment I am completely unsure of my life plan. There’s a lot of things I want to accomplish however trying to figure out the way to get there is very difficult.
I watched a video today with Kevin O’Leary explaining how the best advice his step-father gave him was to go into business and that the creativity side of him wasn’t good enough to do it as a business. He then went on to create a business that was creating video work so he hired people and felt like that was close enough on creativity. What if that is the same for me?
When I look at my skill set I am apparently really good with sales. I’m in the top 3% at my company nationally with over 700 plus employees. The numbers speak for themselves. How can I take that skill and use it for my own business? My mother keeps insisting on my trying to get into real estate. I’ve been in real estate since 2014 with my first investment property however not as an agent. I love real estate however I do not want to sell property for a living. I want to buy them and rent them out.
Sometimes I wonder if my work is good enough to be it’s own product. I often think about that. I went to film school was always told it wasn’t good enough yet in film school none of my other classmates were on the local news but I was for creating a car covered in Legos for a short film I did. People would leave me notes on my car about how brilliant the idea was. The talent is there. I truly believe it is. My biggest issue is being able to sell my own work. Maybe that is something I shouldn’t sell. Maybe I should go into the business world or start in real estate.
I also spend a lot of time wondering what problems can be solved. One thing in specific as an artist is finding a way to inexpensively create physical copies of music for others to consume. I wish there was a way cheaper way to do it.