So, we begin talking about how the Breakthrough magazine launch went, and all of a sudden, everyone begins attacking every single component of the documentary. Or, at least that's what it seemed like at first. The class hadn't seen it before, and they were very, (emphasize: VERY) disappointed in how the video turned out. Nikki and I began to think about it as we'd discuss with the class, and we had been putting so much time and effort into making it, so why had it turned out this way? Why was the filming low quality? Why were the transitions so abrupt? Why weren't the voices clear? The class wouldn't stop asking questions like these, and at first my mind was BLANK--I was disappointed in myself and didn't know what to say about all the criticism we were receiving, because I was agreeing with every single bit of it. I couldn't stop thinking about this discussion throughout the course of the entire day, and it was when it hit me.
I was lacking PASSION.
I had no experience whatsoever at creating videos, and thought it would be interesting and I'd enjoy it, but I was WRONG. Pretty early in the process, I was feeling less motivated by the minute, until the point came where I wasn't putting my all in it; I was just doing it for the good of the class. I couldn't let them down when I was already committed, they were depending on me. But this is where i failed, there was something I could do about it. If I would have just spoken up and said that I wasn't enjoying my job one bit, then we could have talked as a company, and we could have come up with a solution together.
Don't get me wrong, I immediately forced my mindset to change and began putting my entire effort and time into finishing the video. Notice how I said finishing , because that's all that I wanted to do; I wanted my task to be done, to get it over with. Once I finished, I looked over it a couple of times, but since I was lacking passion, I didn't find anything wrong with it. I had lost that critical eye that I overlooked my article with. It had gone elsewhere; it went where the passion went. |
That fear of letting the entire class down was what held me back from saying that I wasn't passionate about the video, but I now realize that I let them down a hundred times worse by not speaking up. No one said these words exactly, but by listening to their negative feedback, I got the message that they actually felt ashamed of the company as a whole, because of the documentary.
I realized that lacking passion is actually dangerous for an outcome, because why go beyond in something you aren't really motivated at? Instead of failing fast (realizing that I wasn't passionate), and failing better, I failed in the end, and not only let myself down, but the entire group as well.