Audio people, and creatives generally, can have silly dumb brains sometimes.
This applies double if you’re younger – in your late teens/twenties – before you decide to accept tremendous amounts of responsibility to things other than your own well being.
I’ve spoken at length before about how taking on a career in audio is difficult at times. I’ve gone off ad nauseam about it in Quit Aspiring.
But it’s incredibly true, and if you’re not careful it can legitimately mess with your mental well-being and self-worth.
Too many of you completely attach your positive self-image to your work. That is, your self-confidence and self-worth come from what you do rather than who you are.
To spell it out, you believe deep in your heart that if you’re not making a living by doing audio work then you’re a failure of a human being.
You can make this especially insidious when you convince yourself – if you are doing audio work – that the work you’re doing isn’t good enough.
“Sure I’m paying my bills with audio, but I’m barely scraping by and I’m only doing tiny indie games/movies nobody buys… It’s not like I’m working on <large AAA franchise>”
All of this is false.
There is No Green Grass
Regardless of what you’re saying to yourself – the belief “I’m not doing audio work therefore I suck” or “I’m not doing the right audio work therefore I suck” is actually a lie.
I’ll spell that out again, read closely.
You are telling yourself a lie.
I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean that 100% completely literally. You lie about things. Often you tell small lies that seem insignificant and non-damaging in the short term.
Here you’re just straight up lying to yourself.
That’s crazy, and a bit sad, right? You should be wanting the best for yourself!
Part of this lie is the belief that your life would get better if only you achieved something you desired to achieve. “The grass is greener on the other side” story.
Friends, I just wrapped up my current working on one of the largest AAA gaming franchises in the world. Sure, I’m proud of that time and humbled I got to be there – but it didn’t wash away any depression I’ve suffered from. Halo did not heal me.
Doesn’t that sound outright silly when you say it? Expecting the object of your desire to “fix” you?
It doesn’t work that way.
You’re More Important
You’re more important than your work in audio. Full stop.
You have inherent self-worth, just by being alive.
If you’re attaching your “goodness” or your “value” by what comes out of your hands, it’s a false measurement. It’s like you’re measuring a loudness level by how good your lunch tasted – the two, in my opinion, have nothing to do with each other.
(Yes, there are people who do good and bad things. There are various vastly different beliefs systems people have about the inherent worth of humans and where that begins or comes from – no I’m tackling none of that here.)
I simply believe that your person was not made, not here just to do audio. I think that should be enough to begin to snap you out of your psychosis (and it is a form of that, a mental issue you’re actually legitimately having that can turn into something worse).
You have value in existing alone. You can choose to do wonderful things for people that add net positive results to their lives – audio or otherwise. You can make beautiful music, you can build fantastic sonic worlds, you can deliver thought provoking words through headphones.
You can also do construction, janitorial work, architecture, teaching, personal finance, web programming, whatever.
None of these things are better or worse than a role in audio. They just are.
You may not be “passionate” about that sort of thing – but I wonder if you’ve given it the chance to become “passionate” about it.
But the point is – and I’ll keep repeating this – your value as a human doesn’t come from your work.
Some of you will be in audio for your whole (or most) of your career. That’s amazing.
Some of you will be in audio only for a short while. That’s also great.
Your value to yourself and others? Same.
You are just as important as the people you idolize.
Think about that. Some of you are Star Wars nerds – you have the same inherent value as George Lucas and J.J. Abrams.
Sure, it’s laudable to desire to affect change in as many people as they have – but it’s not entirely under your control as to whether you get that chance. Is it acceptable for your to assault yourself mentally if you don’t?
Other Responsibilities
Due to my posting in the last few weeks, a number of you have reached out (very kindly) to discuss your struggles with this and tell me you aren’t working in audio.
Humorously, you all tell me how you’re making a bunch more money. I can’t help but happily laugh at that.
Here’s a hard thing I cover in Quit Aspiring.
Audio isn’t for everybody.
I don’t mean it in the sense that “you’re not cut out for it”. I think anyone can do audio work if they’re willing to commit effort to the craft. It’s not like we’re doing rocket science. There’s plenty of jobs that require more difficult engineering knowledge than making sound effects.
I mean that sometimes you choose to accept other responsibilities instead, or simply the opportunities don’t open up.
If you’ve got 3 kids and a spouse, a house payment, and credit card debt – and you decide to pursue audio – there is an extremely low probability that career change choice is going to work out for you. The landscape is competitive and contract wages often don’t pay enough to make it work. Even if you look at someone like Akash Thakkar – who has publicly admitted to at least one six figure year as a business owner – you have a hell of a lot of work to do to get to the point where that comes easy, and you’re trying to do it while raising a family and being a spouse.
But what if you even just want that in the future? What if you want a house and six cats? Or if you want a home in a quiet, small town?
These are a few random examples – but the point is that a career in audio may end up being at odds with the rest of your life.
I’ve literally faced multiple crossroads moments in my life where I had to choose between my hope for (or existence of) an audio career, and something else good. Relationships have ended because of the career I wanted to pursue, I moved across country away from family for it, I don’t see my nieces in person almost ever because of my choices.
That’s real. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, and I don’t always know if I’ve made the best decisions (in fact, I’m positive some of them weren’t great).
But if I’d decided to give up on audio, would I be any less of a person?
No.
Would I have any reason to look at myself as a failure, and beat myself up for “not making my dream come true”?
No.
I say all this and simultaneously tell you that to make everything you dream of happen, the best way I know is to quit dreaming of it and start putting in a lot of work.
Both points are valid. Why?
Because if you’re going to commit to something – commit to it fully. But what you choose to commit to can be different, it can change. “Passions” aren’t static. I don’t love the same things I did when I was six, or even a few years ago.
So I can commit to being a great audio professional. I can also just commit to supporting my family without being an audio professional. If it works out (which is only partially under my control) I can commit to doing both of those things. Thus far I’ve been fortunate enough to do that.
One day, I may not be. I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball, but my brain likes to pretend that it does and then tries to crush my self-esteem with it.
But the truth is, it doesn’t matter what I do – I have plenty of things I can bring to the table of life, even if I were to go deaf tomorrow. Would it be a difficult transition, and some of those things hard to discover? Sure.
But they exist for me, and they exist for you too.
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