Black women, EMPLOY YOURSELVES – especially creative professionals. Make the media you want to see and start controlling the narrative of your own destiny.
Be so serious about this. Especially if you’re currently in media, or any field of industry which could potentially fall under federal oversight. And the way things are going, which industry do you really think the federal beast wont attempt to wrap its tentacles around – for the right price?
Take your future, and your place in the larger future seriously. Liberate yourself from a job market that’s actively working against you.
The Creative Economy: Sharing Skills and Vision
The real workers’ revolution is “educated” “professionals” reclaiming the media for their own and developing a service-based economy of their shared skillsets.
It’s cameramen, photographers, writers, editors, producers, developers communicating with one another and sharing idealist visions for transmission.
It’s the creative economy building relationships and employing one another. And leveraging the systems already in place to take calculated risks for independent financing and production.
It’s purchasing domains and owning platforms. And ceating advertising relationships with other independent producers inside a dynamic creative marketplace.
It’s breaking away from centenarian conglomerates and comic book villain digital monopolies. It’s the people inside of the system who paid thousands of dollars to learn the system, taking back all of their knowledge and labor to refine the emerging system.
Because one thing systems do is emerge. Whether you’re looking, or participating or not. They emerge.
Why Entrepreneurs Have Always Driven Economies
Entrepreneurs have always been the true rulers of economies. Conglomerates, corporations, the crown, the state, and the mafia have always had their hands in the pies of the individual, idealistic, self-determined small business owner. They have always been interlopers.
Oh, but you don’t want to risk becoming an entrepreneur. It’s not for you. Hustle culture, girl bossing, etc. Just not your vibe.
OKAY.
Well, I hope you have your “I just got laid off…if anyone hears of any opportunities” social meda script ready to post to your LinkedIng, Facebook, and Instagram story. You know the disheartening one that strips you of dignity, and makes you feel worthless and weak, and rejected and pitiful. The one we’ve ALL posted. The one everyone hates to have to post. And the pitying one everyone hates to see. Because everyone knows it could be them next. So get your post ready. Because you could be looking for a new job at any time. Maybe you’re already looking for a new job.
Imagining an Alternative Employment Structure
Aren’t you tired? Aren’t you fucking exhausted of being at the whim of a tempestuous economic system, landlords, managers and supervisors who do not have any personal vested interests in your emotional or physical health, or overall mental stability? Don’t you feel depleted of holding up the facade of satisfaction, contentment? Don’t you want to do something better with your time, something different and more rewarding? Something beneficial to yourself and others that gives you a feeling of pride and accomplishment? Don’t you believe that something exists?
You might not be able to conceptualize or verbalize it right this second, but take a chance on your imagination. Couldn’t an alternative employment structure theoretically be created?
And what kind of construction would this alternative require? What materials, what kind of management and skill? How many people would have to be involved, over how long a period of time?
I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know the questions that need asking, and which need pondering.
The Harsh Reality of Job Insecurity
You do not have job security and that’s just a fact. None of us has. But at the very least, entrepreneurs have a bit more control than the regularly employed workforce. Because the entrepreneur has guts, fire, courage and dedication. The entrepreneur can make both fire and the wheel. The entrepreneur can hunt. The regular employee can only be directed.
The entrepreneur can create their own opportunities, anywhere, anytime in any climate. They have flexibility and freedom. When you work for yourself you call all the shots. You pick the hours and the platform. You get to show off and take credit for what you’ve done everyday. No one’s clocking you or reporting, or complaining, or giving arbitrary, meaningless performance reviews. And no one’s eating your lunch.
The fact is you know your economy is going to shit, and your country is going to hell in a hand basket. Every single day is another headline of mess and chaos. Stop letting it cripple you with fear and self-doubt.
Experience & Knowledge Are Creative Professionals Greatest Assets
You’re educated, knowledgeable, and maybe even creative. And you have something, whether or not you can think of this very second, that can help enrich other people’s lives. And that thing is more than just your time and labor and propensity for lining corporate pockets in exchange for half a morsel of health insurance. Somewhere inside of you, you’ve gathered experience and shaped a unique perspective worth sharing through all your years on this planet.
And you’d better tap into it. Because your individual ingenuity is the key to everything you personally want for yourself.
Take control of your future today with small steps. Start creating your digital resume or portfolio. Make it OFF social media. Seek out entrepreneurs you know in real life, or even online. Look up their stories, study their process. Do not rely on a job market to provide you with employment. It’s being torpedoed on purpose to guarantee you less than nothing.
Become Your Own Asset, Not Just a Worker
Now is the time for the educated, creative professionals to put those back-crushingly expensive degrees to use and reposition themselves as more than WORKERS, as more than overhead or commodity. Become YOUR OWN asset. Become your own agent, manager, source of income.
You are the most valuable part of the process. Your time, your energy, labor, knowledge, brain power. Today, you quit fearing AI, and you start becoming the baddest, most ambitious, most locked-in version of yourself.
What do you want this world to give you? HOW DO YOU WANT IT TO LOOK LIKE? What media do YOU want to see out there?
Cool. Go make it.
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