Twenty years self-employed
Photo by Emma Sweeney
This month it will be twenty years ago I quit my job at the Netherlands’ main greeting card publisher and became self-employed. I was a creative product developer in my last employed role, which was perfect for someone with a background in creative writing, marketing and graphic design / illustration.
I then went on a journey producing animations for web, mobile content, branding and website design, and I now believe that all that was just me figuring out what I was really meant to do. It wasn’t until I got involved in producing a large amount of video content for a website my agency Pixillion was building in 2012 when it struck me. I had such a good time shooting those videos I knew where I wanted to go with my career. I started to let go of my design and development work, the staff that came with that, the studio, and doing more and more film and photography work, doing as many passion projects as possible to learn the skills. Fast forward to 2017 and I was a freelance filmmaker and photographer.
The combination of visuals and storytelling is absolutely perfect for me and I do believe I was always meant to be a filmmaker. It took a while to figure this out, but I picked up a lot of useful knowledge and skills running my own agency on the way.
Here’s to the next twenty years!