We all have different passions. Creative people at their very core are actively pursuing many different outlets. They just want to harness their creative energy and output work in any field or direction. This is why we see so many creative people who are designers, but are also painters, musicians, videographers, writers, photographers. The list goes on. It’s natural for these types of people to vent their creativity into multiple passions at the same time. Which is great, I believe that you can never have enough hobbies.
If this list sounds like you, then you will know exactly what I am talking about. You want to share all of your creative work with anyone, everywhere. You may have 5, 6, even 8 of these practices on your website, as a portfolio, to show to whoever comes by. I too, fell guilty to this process. We all have outlets that we love. We want to share our time equally across all of our passions and incorporate as much of these into our personality and professionality as our time and ability will allow. If this sounds like you, this is where you need to stop.
If your goal is to sustain yourself with your passion, be it a designer, musician, or photographer etc. Your going to have to sacrifice some aspect of your creative output. Pursue the one that will potentially offer the greatest opportunity to you, under your circumstances, and provide the greatest platform to transition to the next, after you have weathered your current passion to its full capacity, so that you can give it no more. Pursue one passion.
This isn’t to say that you will never be returning to any of your other passions again. But in order to best take full advantage of your own creative talents, you should focus solely on one. This will keep your mind fully concentrated on one pursuit, instead of diluted across many different ones.
This is a hard task, believe me, I have been in the same starting position, wondering which passion to pursue. Like many other people, I have many different interest and hobbies that I would love to transition into a profession. I even had them on show before I redesigned the website to focus on Design / Photography. I knew all of these together would not help me become discovered or revered as an artist in one particular field or profession.
So I just picked one [Design]. My day job, I am a creative designer, so this led into, and even fuelled my passion for Vintage Badges, Crests, Emblems. All that you see on my ‘Designs’ page. Just pick one thing, and start.
Each passion possess a certain skill set, something you learn, or have learned along the way to help you develop at that practice. These skills are transferable, and lend themselves to multiple different passions, you can take them with you and apply them to different instances of your one passion that you decide to pursue. One passion lends itself to another.
You must deliberately practice at one passion in order to become great at it.
By now, your probably thinking, “what if I get bored with this one passion after a week?”. Well, then you haven’t even started. we all go through spells. One month you could like photography, then you could see an inspiring design style the next month and try that to see if you like it. This is where you have to relieve yourself of this mindset. The constant chopping and jumping from one thing to the next. You will know what your passion is, it is the thing you come back to the most, of any other creative outlet. You have to actively practice at one this one passion. Otherwise, it’s not a passion, it’s a distraction.
When you finally pick the one passion you want to pursue, your then going to ask yourself, “What if I am missing out?”. Don’t let this fear of feeling like your missing out on other areas and creative outlets keep you from committing the time that your one passion deserves. This feeling can be paralysing, and prevent you from beginning to pursue anything at all. Embrace the constraint of your one passion. Make it the centre of your creative focus. You owe it to yourself and your talent, to try this approach.
Be open, experiment with different outlets, research your favourite artists. By focusing on your passion, you will create an audience this will resonate with the people who chose to follow you for you for your talent, hard work, and dedication. Your greatest passion may be one you don’t even know exists yet. But when you find your true passion, you will know.
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