It’s the month of May 2018. I’m staying at my parents’ apartment in Florida. I haven’t done paid work or video of any sort in over two months after suffering the biggest burnout of my life at the ripe age of 22. I have several important decisions I need to make in the near future. What am I going to do for a career? Where am I going to live? Any path I look down is so obscured by uncertainty that I have no intuition of what is right, or wrong, for me going forward. One thing I’m sure of: my career in videography is over. My passion for it has run dry and no longer provides me the energy needed to sustain a livelihood that's worthwhile. My resumes are updated for unrelated fields of work. Even some interviews are scheduled.
I’m in the middle of cooking a new recipe in my parents’ kitchen (a newfound hobby) when I get a text from a friend I know from college. She’s asking me if I was interested in working at a Summer School program to be a Film Specialist, where I would teach Middle Schoolers how to edit film and video. Despite the uncharted territory and sharp anxiety of working with children, it ignited a part of me that I thought had died its natural death.
The impact of my response to her message is still resonant in my life almost two years later.
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When I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2017, I didn't stumble out of the gate. I fell flat on my face, and dragged myself on the ground for as long as I could manage. The uncertainty and self-doubt that is often associated with coming out of school killed whatever self-confidence I had. Yes, I had acquired skills in videography during my undergrad years, but those were all under the pretense of being a student who would one day evolve into a dashing young professional capitalizing on the promise of their ‘potential.' That day didn’t arrive. Turns out that the idea of potential ended up being a cruel mirage.
Yet, I was still lucky. I managed to get a job doing corporate video marketing in the city that I went to school in and grew to love. I had the opportunity to monetize the skills I learned in an environment with those who had confidence in my abilities. It was a situation many of my peers weren’t given. I was set up for success, or at least the chance of it, but I was unable to overcome the various apprehensions one often faces at the beginning of a career:
- Are my skills developed enough to be useful?
- Is there a reason why I’m better equipped for this job than any other recent grad in my field?
-Why am I so nervous, like, all the time?
- Am I replaceable? I’m definitely replaceable.
- Am I useless? I’m definitely useless.
These thoughts became all-consuming and sapped any artistic energy I once had. This was devastating. I had always taken a lot of pride in my creativity, and when that was gone, so was my identity. Worst of all, I convinced myself that I was never creative at all, and was only a beneficiary of a privileged background and talented cohorts.
I continued doing my job in this mindset for several months, often taking breaks to look at my peers' blossoming LinkedIn profiles. The work I did manage to complete was done through a thick fog that was crippling my neurotransmitters from taking in any inspiration from the world around me. My performance declined, and the skepticism I had been inflicting on myself started to rub off on those around me. As the cycle continued, the faith others had in me deteriorated and I was let go from my full-time position. The self-fulfilling prophecy was realized.
For the first time in my life, I was in a Sink or Swim situation without any limbs to tread water. I found myself on my parents’ couch in Tampa, Florida with a draining bank account, and a fortune of self-pity. At least my dog was cool with me being around.
I didn’t see too many options for myself. I had concluded that my time in Pittsburgh was tapped out, as well as my career in film, videography, or anything of the like. I’m not one to be particularly resolute on many things, but I was resolute in that. This is over. Move on. But to what? I had no idea. My Indeed profile was full of applications for sales jobs and other vague marketing positions that matched the ambiguity of my B.A. in Communication and Rhetoric. I didn’t touch my camera for months. These habits of self-isolation and toxic individuality are not unique, they’re a regularity to the masses of us who fall victim to this thought process.
As with most broad social trends, a fundamental cause of this is economic. In a structure where people are working more for less, the marketplace becomes unkind for those seeking social mobility. This understanding of productivity as a blunt barometer of individual success has led to personal depravity, disconnection, and even shame, especially with men in a culture that still has yet to shake off the darker pathologies of the patriarchal creed. At 22, I was already feeling the effects of this cutthroat professional culture, albeit irrationally and prematurely when you consider the actual circumstances I was operating under.
I thought I was finally grounding myself in reality and growing up by pivoting my career in practicality, even if I was more distanced from my creative soul than ever before. For the first time in a while, I was stable, and that’s all I wanted. Living with my parents was a toll on my pride, and of course, I was envious of all the people I missed in Pittsburgh that were embracing this new phase in life. Yet I grew complacent, a little sedated, perhaps. I loved my parents, I loved my dogs, and I loved the lack of fear and anxiety. Those small chips of the past on my shoulder were shakable from this new life. Then I that text from my friend telling me about the position opening.
My fear of taking that position was two-fold: #1.) I had zero experience teaching anything. I always preferred a more solitude route to my skills, where I would hone them on my own and utilize the improvement in my work. Every time I had to explain how to do something to someone, my wordy disposition would take over and I’d stumble through a long-winded ramble of no value. That was with people of my age and intellect. This leads me to #2.) I had zero experience of ANY sort with kids. I was the youngest sibling growing up, and I never had the desire to babysit or mentor any younglings. When I would go to family reunions, I would avoid the youngest of my cousins and drink in the corner with my dad. This wasn’t out of distaste or annoyance, I had no idea how to communicate with them, and that’s stressful. So, the two crucial elements of this job were skills I was clueless about. Cool.
Despite these worries, and my willingness to move on to something different from what I had grown tired of, I still loved video. Wouldn’t it be neat if I could teach others to love it too? I spent the rest of the evening looking at my favorite videos I had done in the past. I hadn’t watched them in forever, and by looking at it with fresh eyes, I started to notice one thread connecting them all: I was creating projects in a sandbox type of environment, where I stumbled along with other people until we finished something we could show off, however minuscule it was. It wasn’t my main projects that I had taken seriously at the time, it was all the dumb videos I had made with my college friends that made the most striking impression years later. For the most part, they were poorly produced and only funny to those making it, but we were learning and creating without any of the weight that clients, budgets, ROI’s and the like incur. It was in that space that I discovered my love for video for the first time. It was where I gathered all the confidence in my abilities that had since dissolved.
Nothing like burgeoning young filmmakers ^^
While I could never replicate that phase of my life again, the thought of fostering it for others seemed gratifying. To be honest, it was the first time I felt the potential of personal fulfillment in over a year. The lease on my apartment in Pittsburgh lasted right up until the very day the position ended. Even if I were to take it, I could move back to Florida afterward and resume the pragmatic approach to my future. Nothing concrete was standing in my way of giving it a go.
So I said yes, packed up my things, and flew back to Pittsburgh. My dog’s mopey face while I was leaving burned in my memory forever.
My anxiety hit its peak on the morning of the first day of camp when I was surrounded by adolescents in a muggy school gymnasium. I found myself observing them like spectators at a zoo. I could already see the cliques forming and the inside jokes being shared. I stood frozen. What the hell I was doing? I had no inkling on how to talk to these kids. My first interaction of the summer was with a sixth-grade boy coming up to me and fervently doing the Floss Dance while maintaining direct eye contact (he’d proceed to do this for the rest of the summer). Before long, it was time for my first group. I learned quickly that the key to interacting with them successfully is to treat them like normal human beings. Who would have thought? I realized I was more connected to my adolescent self than I’d ever been comfortable to admit, manifested by the fact that my Spotify library is a mirror of my first-generation iPod Nano's. The hormonal anxiety, the dumb jokes, the teasing, all of these memories came rushing back to me. Being able to tap into that part of my mind so easily was unexpected, and I knew leaning into it would be useful going forward.
Now that the imagined barrier between myself and Gen Z was toppled, the enjoyment started seeping in. The summer ended up becoming a montage of lighthearted moments and interactions, all set with a backdrop of slip n’ slides, cookouts, and life-sized board games. With this mere summer camp job, I was able to break out of the self-destructive thought pattern I found myself in. I put myself in a situation where I was able to witness and foster all forms of interpersonal and group communication. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t spending my time focusing on what I was trying to achieve on an individual level. I wasn’t studying for a class I was being graded for, I wasn’t editing a film I directed. I was forced to take a step back from all of it and become preoccupied with the multitude of little projects I was overseeing. It was a no-stakes creative environment that was singular to any I’d experienced before, which allowed me to notice and tear down these central inhibitions hampering my artistic output. In short: it was a delight, and I could document these occasions in a lengthy memoir, but that’s not my desire here. Instead, I want to focus on three keystone realizations I had to be reminded of in this first trough of my career: Forget the external forces that distract you from your art, find people you trust to collaborate with, and foster genuine pride in your work.
1. Forget Outside Incentives
Due to many converging factors, the environment that this camp provided took away any expectations of digital fame or client satisfaction. For obvious reasons, the staff did not have permission to post any videos the kids made online, and the campers wouldn’t get to publish their content anytime soon. They didn’t have access to their phones and most significantly, their work was not going to be graded in any form. From the conception of their ideas to their final polishes in post-production, the thought and influence of these external voices were absent. They weren’t thinking of subscribers, grades, or paid hours, which allowed them to stay grounded and derive their ideas from what they themselves felt was worth creating. Being able to witness this reconsideration of the creative process shined a light on how much more enjoyable bringing something to life is when you’re telling a story for yourself and your co-creators.
A major tendency I had developed in my quest to gain film notoriety was to try and pierce the ‘mainstream’ consciousness with many of my endeavors. We’re so accustomed to seeing individuals and pieces of work procuring widespread notoriety that it appears more achievable than ever. Consequently, it’s led to a culture preoccupied with achieving fame in a condensed period. I’ve never seen this more acutely manifested than in all of the aspiring social media influencers who’ve followed my professional Instagram account. The digital media universe is so prevalent that we forget about the physical spheres of influence in closer proximity. This is understandable. It’s difficult to settle for reaching a tiny chunk of an audience when you can witness millions of consumers right in front of your face. A steady theme among artists and publishers is how to break through this so-called “noise.” As time goes on and more of us become our own individual media outlets, the noise will get worse. This rat race will always have a role in my career, and it’s my responsibility to keep up with contemporary techniques to hold my own.
Yet at the time I started the position, this nature of the media ecosystem left me disenchanted and demoralized. In college, I had been preoccupied with the ill-fated prospect of glory with my passion projects, and after graduating I became accustomed to centering my craft around what a particular client was requesting for paid work. The two spheres of my video output-- artistic and lucrative -- had been tainted by an external voice chipping in my ear every second I was working on a project, which distanced me from my central voice that was true to who I was and the stories I wanted to tell.
With the incentives that are usually put in place to increase productivity and quality taken out of the equation at camp, there were plenty of projects the kids started that were not completed or entirely non-cohesive to anyone watching who wasn’t one of the creators or their close friends. To that, I ask who gives a fuck? I knew it was inevitable that a sizable crop of the kids was simply not in a position to put forth the energy and time to plan, film, and edit multiple videos, let alone develop a passion for the medium. It was their summer vacation, after all. The projects that didn’t get done would have been the ones I would have to drag across the finish line anyway. Without any concrete incentive in the form of grades or punishment, the main way to push them to completion would have been to constantly nag about it, which runs in direct conflict with how skill-building in the arts is initiated. If the first memory of creating videos is some random guy bitching in their ear about getting an assignment done, that creates the likelihood of a bitter taste for the art form that discourages them from pursuing it in the future.
An instance that embodies this sentiment is one where a thirteen-year-old boy took the initiative to create a video on the side to surprise his friends with. He was known for being shy and reserved, with a rather intense disposition that doesn’t show itself well in an adolescent social environment. When he asked if he could work on his own project, I hesitated. Aren’t I supposed to be championing teamwork here? He expressed that his motivation for the idea was an inside joke with a group of his friends that were in the same class. One of them overheard our discussion and chimed in with “Are you talking about the memes one? It’ll be amazing!” Yes, teamwork is crucial with video-making, but isn’t communication of ideas the entire point of it all? His idea came from the organic memories he had with his friends, and this was the medium he felt comfortable communicating in. So I made sure to give him the extra time and resources for him to go at it. The finished result was, well, quite confusing... all I’ll say is that it included the Soviet Union, Furries, and a gas mask... but in the process of making it, he learned several skills and had the wherewithal to complete it. When I last saw him, he was excited to show his friends. Would any of that enjoyment have happened if I forced him to work within the group frame?
A major factor for me developing a passion for film and video was how it started in a non-academic context. My High School didn’t provide any film or media classes, and I wasn’t a film student in college. The first time I picked up a camera wasn’t because a teacher told me to, it was because there was some ‘story’ I wanted to tell with my friends during one of our sleepovers on the weekend. I was allowed to associate video-making with fun times and laughter, which became the true incentive later on for building my technical skills more purposely. I like to think I ignited that same process with the campers.
The first major truth I learned was this: If you don’t actively work to keep yourself in an ecosystem that rewards your raw creative impulses, you will lose touch of them, and possibly deceive yourself into thinking they were never there in the first place.
I thought deeply about what my most useful role in this job was, and it was not to construct some efficient curriculum designed to optimize test scores and equip pupils with employable skills. This was summer camp, not school. I don’t have the experience or education to be a certified teacher, and even if I did, the equipment and time provided wouldn’t allow any skill-building to occur beyond the most basic recording and editing capabilities. No technical masterpiece was going to be created here. I concluded that the function that was most important, and possible, for me to fulfill was as a facilitator of that initial creative spark when learning how to tell a story.
2. The Necessity of a “Scenius”
I've come to understand how the people you work with are the most crucial part in fostering this environment. At the beginning of the summer, my colleagues and I approached the first project within academic conventions by assigning the groups ourselves. This quickly became a clear lesson that this wasn’t school, and these kids wouldn’t respond favorably without the pressures we couldn’t impose on them. The result was me putting together three kids who didn’t know each other. When it was time to start brainstorming for a simple 5x5 video, they were stone-faced. No matter how hard I or one of their counselors tried, they were unable or unwilling to come up with any ideas. Where did I go wrong? Was the project boring? Was I boring? Not necessarily. They were not with people they felt compelled to work with. We pushed them to film what was needed, but there wasn’t enough attention and care afforded to get it completed. This was the very first group I worked with, and I couldn’t get them to create what was assigned. Worst of all, they left looking discouraged and doubtful of their abilities.
With a lot of group activities, such as sports, there is some type of ball, time limit, or other exact guidelines to launch the activity at hand. When you're attempting to get youngsters to plan, film, and edit a video, there isn’t a tangible initiator to get the ‘ball rolling’. You can give them a theme, a prop, or even a line of dialogue, but the process only starts in earnest by an original idea at least one of them has and can communicate effectively with their peers going forward. Getting middle schoolers to focus on anything for more than ten minutes is difficult enough, but if they’re also in a position where they don’t feel comfortable to share these original ideas, how can you expect any creation to occur? It's known that the vast majority of operations are reliant on team-work and collaboration of some kind, but this interdependence can be forgotten with more abstract processes like creative work. If I don’t have to pass the ball to a teammate or show my work to an assigned employer, the illusion of productive independence in the artistic process can develop, especially if you’re like me and already have a tendency to feel overprotective of your ideas until they’re fully formed.
In the brief but resonant book “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon, I was introduced to the term “scenius.” A scenius is the idea of how someone’s ‘genius’ is fermented by a group setting where ideas are shared, respected, and built upon. Kleon describes how it tears down the preconception of an artist crafting their magnum opus in isolation, observing “If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.” I’ve always romanticized the idea of the lone genius and never noticed how thinly supported the notion was in history. Different examples of a scenius can be found not just in artistic work, but most major innovations in science (research laboratories), technology (Silicon Valley), and civics (the formation of the Constitution). Even with my previous example of the boy making a video on his own, the idea came from interactions he had with his friends.
I, like many others, view myself to be more productive when I burrow in and work on something on my own time and terms. While this might be true in an acute sense, when I look back at my most productive phases, it was always with the backdrop of at least a couple of trusted and supportive peers by my side. The very beginnings of my true descent into the film and video world was brought on by joining an eclectic film club where I was introduced to like-minded individuals who were there for no other purpose than to build their skills and outlet their creativity. After learning the concept of a sceniusb years later, I realized the only reason I have the career that I do is because of my involvement in a scenius of my own. Inversely, I could associate my period of creative dormancy with my self-imposed isolation and lack of effort to consult with others about potential ideas.
This lesson was further enforced into my mindset by my experience at camp. After the trouble we had with engagement for the first project, we chose to let the kids choose their partners for their next video. When the same group of kids who couldn’t finish a 25-second video was allowed to work with people they wanted to work with, they completed much longer music videos on time and with enthusiasm. Having them be with their friends whom they were comfortable sharing their goofy ideas with transformed the process fundamentally, and provided a clear example of how having a group to collaborate with is crucial in creating something you’ll value for a long time, which leads to my third and final realization:
3. Pride in your work
A Memory: It’s around September of 2006, I’m 11. I recently discovered the awesome capabilities of Microsoft PowerPoint on Windows XP. The ability to have images show up on cue in an order I selected has me entranced for hours on end (totally not a premonition). I had been raised with the band blink-182 playing in my house thanks to my older brother, and I was already an undying fan. Still heartbroken from their break-up over a year later, I decide to make my very own PowerPoint Presentation chronicling the band’s journey throughout the years, all set to their longing song “I’m Lost Without You.” I spend several hours of my time crafting this precious showpiece. When I’m done, I unveil it to my dad, who nods and smiles a satisfactory amount for my 11-year-old ego. Later that evening, I’m getting ready for my first Middle School dance when I overhear my parents talking in their bedroom. My dad tells my mom about the PowerPoint and closes it off with “he— he was very proud of it” with a slight chuckle. I’m offended. How condescending! How dare he not take my work seriously? I begrudgingly put on my carefully selected blink shirt and go to my dance. I think I had a good time.
Over a decade later, I found myself talking about the campers’ videos in the exact way my father did about my PowerPoint. I know now that he wasn’t condescending, he was just proud. Not because of the merits of my PowerPoint about blink-182, but because I valued my effort enough to take sincere pride in it. At such an early stage, arguably the most important takeaway from these creative efforts is learning what it feels like to be proud of your original work. Similar to my point about how having fun with an activity improves the chances of building your skill in it, associating an artistic activity, whether it’s video, visual art, or... uh, PowerPoint… can be the Make-or-Break factor for continuing down that road. I’m talking about pride in its purest form, where it’s not tainted by outside incentives or opinions. Being proud of something because of the reception it received is separate from the pride you feel because you fulfilled your creative vision. It’s the pride you feel the moment your project is done, before any outsider has the chance to tip the scale either way. You press replay, again and again.
Another, more recent memory: It’s Fall of 2017. I’m 22, a recent grad, and a working stiff. I’m sitting, alone, in the poorly lit co-working space I’ve spent the entire day in. I’m tired. Mentally, physically, all the -lys. I have been editing a video for a client for the past week or so, and put some late polishes on it earlier that day. I get an email from said client: “This looks great! I think that’s all the changes we need. Thanks so much Zack!” All the hours I had put in, all paid, were validated. Another success in my full-time job as a Video Producer. I should have been beaming with pride, right? Plot twist: I wasn’t. It was a cool video that I got to learn some new AfterEffects tricks for, and I’m always happy with a satisfied client, but it wasn’t anything I considered too purposeful. I went home early that day, laid on my couch for the rest of the evening, dreading the next day, until I drifted off.
Around this time, I experienced a lot of these moments, and that’s fine. By nature, paid work isn’t always going to be substantial in an artistic sense, but my mistake is that I wasn’t seeking fulfillment anywhere else, and the pride in my work decayed as a result. By that token, I consider the PowerPoint I made in sixth grade more valuable to my artistic development than many of these projects at this phase in my career. The personal pride that I garnered from it is the type any artist needs as fuel to sustain their motivation through all the ups-and-downs of trying to make a living out of your work. That’s why any artist starts creating in the first place, right?
Growing up, our sense of self is consistently shaped by reinforcement systems. Positive reinforcement if we meet someone’s standards, negative reinforcement if we don’t. External reinforcement is significant if not essential to developing any skill. Constant fixation on this, however, is damaging to varying extents. I saw firsthand how this manifested with certain kids constantly asking if what they were making was “right." As I said before, there wasn’t any type of explicit grading system I could implement, yet they still hampered their work with a concern for what I thought. Beyond basic mechanical questions, I left their creative process unimpeded. Some would look confused when I would answer their request for affirmation with a shrug. They had to own this process, and when they did, their reaction to their work looked different and more significant than a simple pat on the back by an elder.
None of the reactions I got from clients matched the fulfillment I felt when I saw a kid watching a finished video they made on repeat for fifteen straight minutes with a self-satisfied sense of enthusiasm. They made this thing from scratch, and as a result, they could take a sense of ownership over it, no matter the reaction it got from others. Even when their friends gave a lukewarm response, they were too busy caught up in self-satisfaction to let that taint their experience. These certain kids, no matter their technical proficiency, were the ones to come at the next project with vigor and confidence. Self-satisfaction has a negative connotation in contemporary self-talk, and that’s a shame. Sometimes, all we have to rely on is a little self-confidence to keep us going. If brief moments of self-satisfaction breeds this confidence, and therefore more art, why not foster it when appropriate?
Hardly anyone feels pride from a test they took, until it gets returned with a high grade. You never hear athletes in sports interviews championing the satisfaction they take in building their athletic skills. Instead, it’s centered around the prospect of their success, measured by their amount of victories. This wave of validation can carry some who have careers with high social or financial returns. We all know artistic careers are hardly ever characterized by such significant compensation. Not every project you work on will get the reaction you’re looking for. When I look back on my formative days of video making, I remember plenty of moments where I was just like some of the campers: sitting at a laptop screen, in awe over this piece I just finished. My first serious project was a thirty-minute long 'short' film. The amount of work that I and others put in for this mammoth of a project was not externally legitimized in any substantial way. We didn’t make any money. We didn’t win any awards. Its life essentially ended the night it debuted. At no point did I let that take away from the pride I felt just by finishing it. Imagine if I did, how discouraging that would have been! It was another obvious lesson I realized by witnessing it in its primal stages.
Paychecks and client approvals lost their effect on me before long, and since I was too fixated on others to look inwards, I let any personal sense of self-validation run dry. I lost my momentum, and eventually my job, as a result. If gawking over a PowerPoint you made is one end of the “pride in your work” spectrum, this was the extreme opposite. I was so tired by the end of the day to try and tackle any projects that would have provided more personal fulfillment. Should I have expected anything different? Giving yourself completely to your work is praised in our culture, but it’s unhealthy at an elementary level. Would you tell a friend who’s in a relationship that they should identify themselves fully with their partner? Of course not. Basic relationship wisdom is to find ways to keep nurturing yourself outside of whatever dynamic you have with your significant other. The same goes for your work, but this goes against the grain of our reality in a couple of ways. When your energy is zapped from working 40 or more hours a week, the last thing you think will help is to get off your ass and do more work, but that can be a sure way to rejuvenate your spirits. Even if it’s a ten-second video, 200-word blog post, or photoshoot with your pet, starting and finishing something strictly for your own good helps ground and reconnect you with why you started your art in the first place. If creativity is a muscle, then satisfaction in your creation is a protein-filled diet.
In Conclusion
Almost two years after I was about to move to Florida and leave everything behind, I now find myself in a similar yet entirely different position in my career. I’m back into videography, involving myself with a lot of the same people and clients that I had worked with before. The job itself is essentially the same. What’s the difference? I make sure to find the time and energy to pursue projects outside of my paid work that can neatly fit into an environment that is creatively and personally nutritious. My personal choices have been to pursue volunteering with video for various nonprofit organizations that align with my social beliefs. Not only does this give me more opportunities to refine my skills, but I also come back to the paid work refreshed and able to give my most honest effort to the task at hand. It’s all a matter of making art in ways that you find the most empowering. If you look around you, you’ll see all of the open opportunities for pursuing that empowerment.
I’d be a sham if I didn’t acknowledge the big ugly caveat to all this, which is the job environment as a whole. Many people don’t have the options or time to pursue personal development outside of their day job. The bills -- and student debt -- need to get paid no matter how fatigued you are. Structural changes beyond the scope of this personal essay are needed to remedy this, and I like to think the causes I have aligned myself with can aid in that endeavor. I’ve been fortunate that my career situation only needed some tweaks to get me back into it, and it’s true that many others, especially artists commissioning their work, are facing a relatable situation. When your enthusiasm for your work is drained, that can paint the rest of your perspective in a coat of black tar. This often leads someone to think that they need to completely uproot their life (like ditching town) to thrive again, but that’s not always necessary. Unhappiness in your career is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw it all away. Even if you’ve lost every ounce of your passion, self-confidence, and belief in your craft, there was a part of you that was deep and important enough to galvanize you into pursuing this in the first place. More often than not, that part of you is still alive, and the methods of awakening it are right in front of your face.