In an age where high levels of competence at your craft are assumed, the thing that differentiates us is vision: the way in which you wield your craft to tell stories you see with your eye and your heart.
Vision is what you see and the unique way in which you see it. It is the meeting place of all that you are, all that you bring to your craft and the medium of ideas. The hard work in making your vocation is not finding someone, anyone who will pay you to count beans; it’s in finding a market for your vision. The biggest earners are those who have retained their vision while serving their chosen market. They’ve married their craft with their commerce and done it while uploading their creative integrity, excellence and loyalty to their vision.
Vision is your biggest asset. It’s that one intangible for which clients will hire you. Arguably, there are levels of competence at this craft. And there are certainly true masters and total hacks, but those are the extremes.
By saying this whole journey begins with vision, I mean the vision for your life: the ability to receptively see the future as you’d like it to be, to hear the whisper of the voice that is calling you to something beyond what you are now. Calling you to a life beyond convention–to a sustained creative endeavor that nourishes both your soul and family. It is vision that will help you find your way when it’s confusing with good opportunities threatening to jeopardize even greater ones. It is vision that will put you back on the track when the pull of the commercial world is so strong it draws you too far from your craft and you need to make your way back. It’s what makes great art and great lives. It’s all the virtues at once–the hope to see a different future, the faith to reach for it and the love to keep going when it seems like working at the local job would be the path of least resistance, if not also the path of least reward.
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