How does a person find their own voice? Let's clarify: How does an ARTIST find their own style? Let's complicate the question a bit...How does an artist find their own voice working 10-12 hours a day for someone else creating content that someone else wants them to create while supporting a family? Finding one's own voice should be a simple process really. We find something that draws us in, we experience it, enjoy it, and modify it. That experience leads us to the next, which then leads us to the next, and eventually we look back to see a pattern where I footsteps tend to wander.
The only thing I've learned over the past 3 months during my video production internship with a certain company is what type of content I definitely don't want to create. I wouldn't say that this is a productive step toward finding one's voice. I once took a leadership class at Brigham Young University where Professor Felin taught us to focus on our strengths rather than our weaknesses. I feel as if the process of intentionally wading through those things one hates are the same as focusing on weaknesses rather than strengths. But I guess it's somehow a start.
Somewhere inside I feel like the answer to this riddle lies in taking a leap of faith. Finding one's voice must require a certain level of risk, a step into the dark, a call to the unknown. The Hero's journey requires one to cross the threshold of comfort into a world new to the protagonist. This is a scary step, it's supposed to be. What stops us from moving forward is the realization that there inherently exist two types of ending to any story. That of Success or Failure...and the F word is unbearable to most of us.
I'm inside of my comfort zone right now at the threshold of decision. I'll never find my own artistic voice if I don't search for it, and there's no time for searching while working 10-12 hour days. So now what? Take a Step...a Big Step.
