i think i'm slowly discovering my niche. it's hard deciding what you want to do with your life; i'm lucky in the sense that my general plan has been mapped out for years now (this is starting to sound far much too like a dodgy personal statement).
i remember back in year eleven that i wanted to write, but within that was far harder to distinguish. a writer? no chance. i get distracted far too easily; my books would become self confessed fictional diaries (believe me, i've tried before) or plotless 'happy ever afters'. enjoyable to read, but essentially pointless, both in style and content.
of course, i was always aware there were many different careers within 'writing' as a key word. i could become one of those smooth talking salespeople convincing innocent victims to buy their products. i could become a technical writer (and nearly accidentally applied for a job to be one, oops) and resort to a condescending nature to fund my lifestyle.
or i could become a journalist.
i imagine the idea came to me like a lightbulb turning on, or perhaps a simpsons-esque epiphany. in reality i'm fairly certain it was a growing suggestion which evolved into the ideal career choice.
i'm not sure if it's due to my personality factors or just an innate ability to get people to tell me their problems. saying that, although i wouldn't mind being a broadcast/newspaper journalist it's certainly not my first choice.
this is where the idea of having a niche comes in.
funnily enough, i discovered this particular aspect through music. again, this is starting to sound ridiculously pretentious, and in one sense it truly is.
taro - alt-j; the discovery of my niche.
i've always been one of those people who actually listens to music - the lyrics, the beat, the rhythm. there's something so innocent about listening to the same song but recalling different parts separately, and then putting them back together like some elaborate jigsaw and 'seeing' the song in a whole new meaning.
"robert capa helped me find my niche." maybe i'll write that in my autobiography, if i do succeed in my career choice and go on to be famous.
i've written a lot of paragraphs and even more words and still haven't established that my niche consists of travel journalism with photojournalism. only those with a lot of 'cultural capital' as my media teacher jan would say, could possibly forage between the sentences to find what i'm actually trying to say.
i want to become a travel/photojournalist because it combines two things i love - i want to travel the world, i want to learn to speak greek and arabic and turkish and spanish, i want to move abroad and explore different cultures and try new foods. photojournalism is the best way of recording it. writing is easier when expressed with photos - war journalism only properly expressed the horrors of war with visual images; the human brain can only interpret a realistic portrait of events with retinal displays.
