“I used to work as a producer at a media company. It was one...

“I used to work as a producer at a media company.  It was one of those cultures where you worked until you had nothing left to give.  My boss’s voice would be the first thing I heard every morning.  He’d phone me at 5 AM, asking ‘Have you done this?  Have you followed up with that?’  He’d put me down.  He’d shout at me during meetings.  I can tell you the exact type of tile in the office because I spent so much time looking down.  And I wasn’t allowed to grow.  I wasn’t allowed to do anything on the creative side.  I could only handle the budgets.   Once I asked him if I could leave early one day to take a course in art direction, and he said: ‘What makes you think you could succeed at something like that?’  That’s when I finally quit.  I freelanced for a while.  And the more distance I got from the job, the more I realized that I’d allowed myself to be pigeonholed.  I wanted to do something creative.  I started trying to save money to attend the New York Film Academy, but it was so expensive that I decided to put all that money into gear instead.  And for the past couple months, I’ve been making short documentaries about people.  I’ve made about twenty of them so far.  I let the person use the video however they’d like.  I’m not sure what will come of it, and I’ve only got a couple months of savings left, but for the first time in my life I feel like I’m using all of my talents.  And I’ve never had this much fun.”
(Johannesburg, South Africa)