With some really great opportunities has come the need for expansion and focus on other areas in order to continue to build partnerships and maintain professionalism while doing so. Although a parody of current political events, I’ve come up with my own plan featuring five goals to keep moving forward and keep having fun!
1.) Photography first: It’s my passion, it’s my hobby, and it’s grown to the point where it is a secondary job that I’ve grown financially enough to potentially make my main professional freelancing. Even though there are other areas like web design, writing, and video reviewing that I’m constantly working to improve on, photography is what brought me to the game, and what most of my efforts will continue to go towards improving.
2.) Continuing to build and grow relationships: I’ve had the opportunity to meet, and now work with quite a few people involved with this toy hobby. From a toy retailer, to a toy maker, I’m very blessed to have had some of the opportunities with that have lead to all sorts of growth personally and professionally. Having a good base of trust, honesty, and dependability with those relationships not only makes all parties involved feel good, but the rapport built can even lead to knew relationships and opportunities.
3.) Avoiding the negative: In the toy collecting hobby, I’ve definitely seen and come across a lot of negative interaction that always seems to stem from envy. From daily arguments among collectors over what seems like nothing at all, to even having seen someone go on a full scale 4chan rant about me for getting free toys, it feels like I have seen every and all things silly that the internet has to offer. Being able to easily recognize things that even look headed in a negative direction and immediately avoiding it not only let’s me maintain a positive attitude about the hobby in general, but keeps my interactions with those in the collecting hobby to the really great people out there.
4.) Remaining humble and striving to learn: With that, I have to continue to use my own envy and wants to push myself to improve. Every minute trying to make another look bad is a minute wasted because I could have spent it further improving myself and my craft. It also means having enough humility to not become complacent and stop asking those who I admire for any advice I can get.
5.) Profit: Internet Meme or not, it’s true. As much as I do this for fun, it does take quite a bit of time between web design, photography, video reviews, Photography for this toy group, photography for this toy seller, etc. etc.. On top of having a full time job and family at home, it’s almost like living two lives at times. So, even though there will continue to be opportunities to be involved with just for the sake of learning, however it is important to also find opportunity and work with benefits/compensation, because it even makes it easier to stay involved in and current with toy collecting itself.
