Starting Over: What I’ve Learned
“Every sunset is an opportunity to reset.”
― Richie Norton
Catawba Creative is going on 2 years soon, and a lot has changed in that time. What started out as a partnership with a friend, as well as having a mentor guiding us has turned into a one man operation. Although it hasn’t gone as planned, I’ve learned a lot over these past few years. I want to take this first blog post and talk about a few things I’ve learned on this journey so far.
1. Don’t say yes to everything.
The first year of Catawba Creative was a scramble to get as much work as possible, even if the passion wasn’t there. I said yes way too many times and paid for it. I learned a lot from these experiences, but I also lowered my worth and stressed myself out by doing favors for friends and doing work on promises that never came through.
2. learn enough to trust myself more than others.
Losing a business partner in the first few months of starting something is never fun, but sometimes people aren’t what you expect. I made the mistake of trusting him with starting the company and handling the legal side of things, which made it even harder when he left. The only reason we did it that way was because I didn’t understand it and didn’t trust myself to do it right. Learn enough to trust yourself more than others, this would have saved me a lot of headache if I just did it myself.
3. if i don’t love it then don’t try to build a life around it.
I started CC as a marketing, advertising, and graphic company. It took a few jobs to realize that I really don’t like online advertising at all. I thought that I loved it, then I saw it was a money game more than a creative game. The companies I was working for didn’t want to be creative, they just wanted google ads to be set up and work. That didn’t really work for me so I took a step back to reevaluate.
4. stop overusing AI
Chatgpt was like crack when it came out. I tried to use it for everything, and my mentor loved it. Clients were happy and I was working less. Then I noticed that my creativity was declining, and I felt myself becoming a lot dumber than I knew I was. AI is a great tool to have, but overusing it is extremely detrimental and disheartening. Use Chatgpt to help learn a subject, to organize a list, or check your work. But don’t let it do everything, you will be much better off.
5. I don’t need to optimize my life to live it.
Let’s talk about my old mentor. He pushed me to better myself more than anyone and I’m thankful for that, but I started noticing when it went too far. I would feel guilty if I didn’t hit the gym every day. I would read books about Stoicism purely to feel smarter in conversations. I’d listen to podcasts that would yell at me and make me feel lazy for resting on a weekend. I was using self improvement to to prove my worth. This turned into not truly living life, but trying do everything correctly consistently 24/7.
