It feels pretty natural to want a bigger spotlight right ?
An artists career usually starts off with a few friends holding a flashlight, usually in some dive bar while someone’s eating chicken wings in the corner. Hopefully those friends invite a few more friends with a few more flashlights, and all of a sudden the room gets a little brighter. Take that 10 steps down the road, and for a select few artists , if you’re good enough (and lucky enough) the lights keep getting bigger and brighter until you eventually need sunglasses just to walk on stage.
Sound familiar ? Something you’ve hoped for ? Or planned for ? It’s not a bad thing to want. There’s a whole bunch of reasons that the biggest spotlight is fun and rewarding and offers the kind of career you’ve always wanted. But it’s not the only thing worth chasing, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think there aren’t sacrifices to be made on the way to the biggest and brightest lights.
Maybe the size of the spotlight isn’t as important as what and who is standing under it. If chasing the brightest lights on the biggest stages means being someone else’s version of you instead of your version of you, is it worth it ?
There are costs to every decision we make in life. Personal and professional. Nothing comes for free. When you set out a path for your career ask yourself this - if the biggest spotlight is the most important thing, will I still like what I see when I get there ? If you can make sure the answer is yes, buy some sunglasses and work your ass off until you get there. But if the answer is ‘I’m not so sure', don’t feel like you're admitting failure before you even start. It’s never a failure to stay true to who you are. It’s amazing how bright 1000 flashlights can be (or even 100) sometimes telling yourself it has to be 10,000 means you might not like the view.
Bigger is good. You want as many fans as you can get. You want your career to grow. Work hard to make that happen. But biggest isn’t always better. Grow your career at a pace that allows you to stay who you are and become
who you wanna be. Do it your way. The spotlight will find you and you’ll be happier with what the world gets to see.
Photo credit - Connor Scheffler.
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