Don’t Let a Global Market Crash Put Your Creative Portfolio at Risk.
[by Carolyn Potts]
I am writing this the day after the 500-point drop in the US stock market which was felt around the world.
If your 401k now looks like a 101k, it’s hard to feel creatively inspired. Understandably, many people are freaking out. But remember: fear kills creativity.
However… there’s always another way of looking at any situation. E.g., maybe now’s the time to do a portfolio piece that would illustrate those anxious feelings? Hmmm…..
Is this market news going to bad for business? Maybe. As I walked with a friend and we past a newsstand’s screaming headlines, she quipped: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Fear is good for the media business. It attracts more customers.
As Charles Dickens wrote in the opening paragraph of Tale of Two Cities in 1859:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
If you adopt “it was the worst of times” thinking, you put your most valuable business asset –your creativity–more at risk than your stock broker did with your portfolio. If you succumb to fear-based thinking, if you allow that to take over your mind, you lose peace and intuition which are the very conditions which foster creativity. We are in an age where intellectual property (IP) is now driving large sectors of our economy (e.g, Apple, Google, FaceBook,etc). Your imagery is IP and is part of that economic engine. Lose the mental states necessary to create good IP, and it’s like a manufacturer having an explosion on an assembly line in the industrial age.
To defend against creativity-killing fear, here’s how I’d modify the famous morale-boosting 1939 poster issued by British government: “Keep Calm, Keep Creating, and Carry On.”
Carolyn Potts, photography marketing consultant; international speaker; and former rep, shows seasoned & proactive photographers how to get more work. www.cpotts.com , http://bit.ly/FaceBookPottsConsulting and http://carolynpotts.net and Twitter: @PhotoMktngCoach
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Brilliant! Thank you I needed that!
Immediately on reading this several images and metaphors came to mind. It is often during periods of turmoil that some artists channel their nervous energy into work.
Regardless of what is happening in general, work goes on for the majority of people. Not working/producing, is the equivalent to standing still in a race. When you do finally decide to start running again, you’re going to be behind.
Good advice in general, to take current events and decide how to portray something which is intangible by an image which speaks a thousand words.
Thanks for the post and reminder.