Confidence

Those of you that read these blog entries, however you find them, may not be all that familiar with my background or experience. To sum it up in a sentence, I’ve been editing since I was a teenager, went to college and earned a degree in video production, and have been working professionally for almost three years. That’s the perfect way to frame this blog entry.

As all editors, I grow continually in my field and expertise. However, I feel that this growth happens more rapidly at this early stage of an editor’s career, and I’ve felt it, growing pains and all. Going from producing projects for fun to producing projects for school to producing projects for a client are big leaps, the latter being the biggest. When I first got into a full time job or my first freelance gig, I was high anxiety:

What if I didn’t know how to finish something? What if I didn’t know how to structure an edit? What if I ran out of ideas? What if I couldn’t make a deadline?

After three years of full time work and freelance jobs and personal projects, here are the answers.

What If I don’t know how to finish something? Look it up. The Internet is great. If not a solution, I have always found a work around to finish a job.

Don’t know how to structure something? Never happened, at least not in a way I couldn’t finish. Take a walk, switch to something else, and come back to it. No problem. I used to stress myself out when I knew deep down I’d be fine.

What if I ran out of ideas? Never happened. Maybe a day of creative block here or there, but just couldn’t do it? Nope, never. There is always somewhere to draw inspiration.

What if I couldn’t make a deadline? Never happened. At least, I’ve never missed a deadline that I had any control over missing. I understand how long things take, and I have learned to plan appropriately (that is, plan 2x the time if possible. HA!)

What I’m getting at is sometimes it’s nice to take a step back when you’re early in your career, and realize that you are actually a professional. You don’t wonder if you’ll be able to do something with your skill or time constraint – you KNOW you can finish it properly. It’s not even a question. It’s more like “Oh, this is what needs to be done? No problem, I can do that.”

To have attained that confidence is a huge personal goal reached in my professional life.

(And that confidence is not around EVERY single day, I still feel like a crappy editor every once in a while.)

Confidence of different types will come and go with jobs and gigs, but this flavor will be sticking around a while.