Welcome to my nightmare
I think you’re gonna like it
I think you’re gonna feel you belong
I have a recurring nightmare.
I’m perched in a swanky office, encircled by executives, having just unveiled my grand pitch. The air is thick with anticipation, smiles abound, and discussions of our promising future collaboration fill the room. The deal is sealed, contracts inked and a cool 250 grand secures its place in my bank account. It’s the epitome of success. Yet, as the dream unfurls, the room takes an unsettling turn.
In a twisted dance reminiscent of a cross between Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ and the surreal imagery of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” music video, the ambiance morphs into a phantasmagoric nightmare. The executives smiles get a little too large, their faces elongate, contorting into lizard-like visages.
The air is punctuated by raucous laughter as they guzzle endless flutes of champagne, their reptilian grins widening. The scene takes on an eerie, Wonderland-esque quality as I, like Alice, begin to diminish in stature. The room spins in a disorienting whirl, and in this bizarre fusion of reality and absurdity, the businessmen, now more lizard than human, revel in their surreal amusement. As I shrink smaller and smaller, their laughter echoes, a cacophony that haunts the edges of reason. It’s a psychological descent into the abyss, a nightmarish journey that transcends the boundaries of ordinary fears.
Thankfully that’s not what happened. I said ‘no’ to the 250k that was offered and walked away. I’d made a choice. A big choice. And it was the best choice I’ve ever made. Let me explain.
Chasing ‘big clients’ was the wrong idea. In fact it was the worst idea. Sadly, I was quite good at it so – long story short – I ended up sitting down in the very fancy London offices of a large corporate entity. And yes, you will have heard of them but I’m not saying. I did my (well rehearsed) pitch and nailed it. We knew we’d got the gig so we grabbed an overpriced coffee and headed home. That’s when the panic attack started.
Welcome to my breakdown
I hope I didn’t scare you
That’s just the way we are when we come down
A panic attack is a sudden and intense surge of fear or anxiety that can happen without any apparent reason. I’ve had them all my life but I generally have them under control and they only ‘boil over’ if something is very, very wrong.
It usually reaches its peak within minutes and can be a frightening and overwhelming experience. Some people (like me) also experience a sense of being detached from reality. During a panic attack, I often have a strong urge to escape the situation but, I was going to be in a moving vehicle for a couple of hours and at this point in my life I wasn’t comfortable acknowledging them or talking about them to others. I was embarrassed about them. Stupid, I know but that’s where I was. So, I sat, unable to breathe or talk properly trying to calm myself down.
It was when I thought about quitting the whole deal that my breathing started to steady. It was then, at that moment, sitting in my business partners car, that I decided “fuck it, I’m out” (no more disconnected feeling), I’ll just make art and sell it somehow (not feeling dizzy now) hell, I’ll go busking if I have to! (no more chest pains)… And that was the entire journey or, at least, that’s the only memory I have left of it. But, the whole painful experience gave me a profound insight into what I REALLY value. It was time to take a step back and reconsider the path.
I thought to myself, “This is the thing I love, more than anything else. And I’m good at it. But doing it your way makes it suck. You don’t care about the same things as me and that’s a problem. Actually, that’s always been the problem. Actually, it’s been the same problem every step of the way. How on on God’s earth did I end up here? I’m going to have to rethink this entire thing.”
In the labyrinth of life, when you find yourself staring at a dead end, the wisdom lies in recognising that sometimes the only viable option is to backtrack. It’s a profound realisation. A strategic retreat in the chessboard of existence. Confronted with an impasse, the act of retracing your steps is not a surrender but a tactical move, an acknowledgment that the current path may not lead to the desired destination.
Backing up is not a sign of defeat but rather a courageous response to the realities of the terrain. It requires a certain humility, an acceptance that the chosen route may not be the most fruitful. This ‘retrace’ allows for a recalibration of strategies, a chance to reassess the landscape and discover alternative avenues that might have been overlooked in the pursuit of the forward march.
Realising I was at a dead end was one thing. What to do about it was another thing entirely. In the absence of any real direction I started hanging out with a couple of artist friends deciding not to be too hasty when making my next move. I did the first smart thing I’d done for a long time and gave myself the time to think – I didn’t know it at the time, but the next opportunity to step back and take stock wouldn’t come until something closed the world down for a year – and the fallout from it, an eight month ‘moment’ of introspection and redirection, would see a similar seismic shift in my priorities in life beyond 2020.
The act of backing up in the face of a dead end allows us to anticipate the unforeseen turns that lie ahead in the unfolding narrative of our journey.
Define what success is to you before you chase it. It’s not the same for everyone. We all have different priorities and they’re all valid. You do you. It took getting right to the point of signing on the dotted line – almost doing the deal with the devil – for me to finally understand the vastness of my mistake.
Not all clients are a good fit.Sometimes, it’s clients that make a dream job a nightmare. Pretty soon you find yourself sitting at your desk thinking ‘this is the thing I love to do above anything else, and it sucks. Why am I doing this!?’
You have to find the right clients that fit the way you want to work before you start worrying about how much they’ll pay you.
If you don’t and you allow the wrong clients to dictate everything you do, your portfolio and all your future work will be at risk.
Don’t be scared to turn down gigs that don’t match your style of working or your personal values. Be choosy, be gutsy, you may not make as much money but you’ll be happy and that’s invaluable.