Bad (helmet) hair day, tan lines and burned out; it’s a sunny day and I’m working for a friend so my crazy is showing. That’s my latest two videos…
I thought carefully about business identity in the months leading up to rebranding last April (wow – seems like years ago!). Guess I’ve been thinking about it from a personal perspective since becoming unemployable too. After years of working “for the system” in schools and front facing offices, masking and “toning down” who I am I decided I wanted to be as authentic as possible, without offending unnecessarily with my “Business Persona”. (Masking your whole life is exhausting – partly why I’m “unfit for work” now!)
I’ve been recording videos of my leather craft since April last year (this was my first!), teaching myself to edit (haha it’s like cubase but with more tracks!). In my videos I’ve realised I’m pretty much babbling away to the person I’m making for, or random people who come across me on Social Media – I mean I can’t just talk to the camera! (Who am I kidding: I talk to inanimate objects all the time, but that’s in a different way!)
When I’m not ill I’m quite capable of babbling away to pass the time pleasantly… years masking in customer / small-people facing jobs waiting on technology has taught me that! But these last two videos are different.
The difference is I was doing a job for a friend. This particular friend is one of less than a handful of people that knows “me”. I mean, not some filtered, masked version of me that I’ve allowed the world to see for various reasons! This is the me in the video! Me that sings random songs, senctences and words, makes random weird noises and impersonations, and bounces off on a million different tangents or gets lost in thought.
Thank goodness for cuts and captions or half the “leatherwork” content of the script (haha like I’m organised enough for a script – this baby’s winging it all the way!) would be lost in the chaos that is my mind forever! (See my leg bag video for a classic example. I gave my reasons there – won’t apologise for something I can’t help!)
But again (oops I side tracked!) this video was different! It took more editing because a lot of the random jumping about in my head was out loud – I was chatting to my mate while I worked! But to be fair, a lot of it made me laugh out loud when I watched it back. (Which is good when you have to watch back every 5 seconds multiple times for a 20 minute video!)
I was tired and burned out when I did this job. I was under completely self imposed time pressure to leave by 5 (didn’t leave till gone 7) for a night away with Beastie. I have tan lines and it was a really bad helmet hair day (and needed a haircut”!) but there’s more life and more of me in these videos than in any of my others. It’s authentic me!
So – love it or hate it, I am sure I’m Marmite: I know my sense of humour isn’t for everyone and I’m sure my scattered thoughts drive some people mad (me included!) but like I said at the beginning, I thought a lot about branding and brand voice, including people I would put off, so **if you hate it – thank goodness the internet is a big place and you don’t have to see me ever again! I won’t lose any sleep over it! If you hate it enough to “dislike it” I’m honestly surprised that I moved your emotions enough to expend the energy to click a button! But again, no sleep lost, I don’t need that kinda customer!
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