Right, so 2022. I remember seeing a lot about Victoria Beckham that year. Not just the clothes, you know, but the whole package. Everything looked so sharp, so put together. Her brand, her look. It got me thinking, actually.
I was trying to get my own little thing off the ground at the time, some freelance stuff. Seeing all that polished VB content made me feel like maybe I needed to up my game. Look more professional, present things better. Sounded simple enough, right? Just… be more polished.
The Big Plan That Wasn’t
So, I decided 2022 was the year. I was going to sort out my ‘personal brand’, whatever that means. First thing I tried was getting a decent profile picture. Spent a whole Saturday trying to take a good photo against a blank wall. It was a joke. The lighting was terrible, I looked like I was being held hostage in most of them. Gave up on that pretty quick.
Then I thought, okay, maybe the website. Needs to look slicker. Like those clean lines you see in her designs. I started messing around with website templates. Fiddled with one for days, maybe weeks. Couldn’t get it right. It either looked generic, or I’d break something trying to change it. It just felt like wading through mud.
- Tried different colour schemes. Looked awful.
- Tried changing fonts. Made it unreadable.
- Tried adding fancy widgets. Slowed the whole thing down.
It was just one frustrating dead end after another. It wasn’t this smooth, elegant process I imagined. It was clunky and annoying.
Reality Check Time
Somewhere along the line, I even briefly looked at clothes. Thought maybe dressing sharper would help me feel sharper. Saw some VB stuff, realised the price tag was way out of my league, obviously. Looked for similar styles, ‘power suits’ and whatnot. Honestly, just scrolling through pages of clothes online felt exhausting. Didn’t buy a thing in the end. What was I even doing?
It hit me that trying to project this super polished image, inspired by brands like hers, was taking up all my energy. And the energy wasn’t going into the actual work I needed to do. It was all going into trying to look the part, and failing miserably at it.
So, I scrapped the big ‘rebrand’. Ditched the website overhaul for later, used an old photo I already had. Decided to just focus on doing good work and being reliable. Funny thing is, things actually started moving better after that. Maybe all that gloss isn’t the point. Maybe it’s just about getting the job done. Took me a while, and a lot of wasted effort in 2022, to figure that simple thing out.
