It may be apparent that I like writing things, and I clearly like writing about myself; so having the chance to do both for an external body, well that’s a body that I can boogie with.
Lecture in Progress is such body, the sister company to It’s Nice That – covering arts and design in various interviews, links and self-initiated content. As the name kind of gives away, it’s a learning resource to supply lecture levels of information for the informed. They asked me to write about myself, which I do all the time, but writing about myself for someone other than myself proved a real challenge.
When you write for you, there aren’t any hang ups on whether you come across like a bit of an egomaniac because of course you are, you’re writing about yourself. Like any creative output, when I do anything for myself I’m only limited to the suitability for it’s purpose that I’ve self defined. It’s clear I’ve got a bit of an ego; enough ego at least to want to write about myself regularly and express my opinion in hopes that others would care to see and read it.
Just like the difference that this platform has from my employment, I am the client for myself and the production of anything needn’t please anyone beyond the almighty I. Though to produce writing for an external, whereas all words past were for my own benefit, is quite a difficult task, wrapped in a strange familiarity.
Creating words of myself felt somewhat dull and undesirable, which isn’t something I expected to find. I assumed the passion I felt for voicing my opinions and observations would be partnered with how I could write about myself, but it turns out if you try and objectively look at yourself; you only mislead yourself into thinking you are either more dull than you realised or much more brilliant than the world does—the latter of which I won’t realise until much later when I develop the world’s first Vincent cult.
I have compared writing about myself and self-initiated design because they are both creative outputs defined and demanded by myself, but they are leagues apart in content. Whereas design for myself could be a self-promotional project, writing about myself is actually just making it about me. I’m quite certain that design that only involved promoting and displaying the physical existence of Vincent Walden would be horribly dull with a hint of knitwear. Maybe knitwear with a skull if I make it a little more edgy.
I’m convinced that up to this point you’ll have reached an overwhelming amount of Walden self-analysis so perhaps I should actually explain the article I was banging on about at the start, walls of text ago. In LIP’s series of interviews with recent graduates titled First Hand they are collecting a varied picture of early graduate life and the strife that comes with post-success career. I spoke about mistakes, the ones I’ve made and the ones I still make ’cause we’re all human, and the contrast in work I’ve found from working in-house for a charity then jumping so radically to a local agency where I currently reside.
I implore you to sign up, have a read and revel in their extensive content; not merely because you can read what I’ve written (because I’d ruddy love that) but also because as a student or a creative, their extensive catalogue of resources, links and articles is worth the small trading of an email address and name.
Stay excellent, love Vincent x
