What's your greatest personal challenge in life?
I ended a long day at work today: every week, I spend a day on photoshoot for TVD (www.thevelvetdolls.sg) and today was photoshoot day with my lovely model @billetsdouxfromc!
Photo courtesy of Chanel.. This is me glamorously fanning the studio light with a piece of cardboard cos the studio light overheated and couldn't be used 😂
Yeap we decided to bring the shoot indoors today cos it was raining and also I felt like we both really needed a break from the sun.. 😭 I'm so tanned recently from all the outdoor photoshoots!
I shot today since it was just a simple studio shoot. Thankfully the photos look pretty okay! 👌
I find that being self-employed is a huge challenge every single day.
If you asked me maybe 6 or 7 years ago if I'd ever imagine myself as a "老板" or business owner, I'm very sure my answer would be a vehement NO!
Back in my employee days as an illustrator/digital artist at IFS, I always thought that the best (and easiest) kind of life would be to have a decent job doing something I enjoyed and earning a nice stable income.
Whoever would have known heh. Lazy & unassuming me being my own boss!
I've never been particularly ambitious, and I always looked at my dad (he works as a butcher at the market) and felt that being your own boss was way too tough. How ironic that I ended up where I am today.
Thinking about it amazes me too, however did I end up here? Lol.
I face a plethora of challenges daily, but I think one of the greatest challenges for me is finding the motivation and strength to keep on working.
Being an employee is very much different from being self-employed. The stress levels are much higher, for one. Every wrong decision I make for myself and the business could potentially become a major setback for me.
My biggest challenge is to ensure that even amidst my busy schedule, I make sure that I don't ever stop doing what I should be doing for TVD week in and out, and doing my best to multi-task and juggle all my different work and personal commitments daily.
I've been working non-stop since I got back from my last trip in July and it's been tough, really. But I'm proud that TVD has been pushing out new collections every week without fail, and I'm gonna work even harder to keep it going.
Although it's a struggle to get through the difficult days (like photoshoot days.. Just like today, I had to really force myself to keep my energy level up while shooting through three hours) and sometimes a chore to spend hours working on my product images and pages, at the end of the day, I feel incredibly blessed that I am working for myself, and doing something that I truly want to succeed at.
One of my favourite quotes is: Do what you love and love what you do.
We whine and we complain, but I can't imagine doing something I don't love for the sake of money, this is something I've never been able to make myself do. My best self-motivation is loving what I do.
That's why I've never been motivated enough to study more for higher qualifications but instead spend hours on things I love like singing and music and drawing and art.
Maybe it was inherent in me that I'd end up working for myself because I never did well in a system I didn't believe in.
TVD has got such a long way to go! I know there's so much I need to improve on. But I think we're slowly progressing forward.
继续加油下去吧!