We recently connected with Marcus Juno and have shared our conversation below.
Marcus, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
The journey of an artist is never easy, yet we consistently crave the grind that sometimes leaves us feeling depressed and like we have failed. It’s an obsession, really, and it goes to show that some of us prefer spontaneity over stability. What we crave isn’t the constant worry about whether we will be able to afford rent. It’s the feeling we get when we realize we have done something that brings us fulfillment. That’s something the system cannot give us, and therefore something we need to figure out how to sustain ourselves. The system tells us that our life is about preparing for the end destination. An artist understands that there is no destination.
It’s that rebelliousness that drives me towards my goals, because I know that I am the only person who can create the life I want. Do I feel the weight of not having corporate benefits, a stable job, or a home base? Sometimes. There are certainly those days when I people watch and consider what it would be like to live as a normal member of society, doing normal things making normal money with normal problems. But where’s the fun in that? I’ve always viewed the world through a wider lens. When I was a teenager, I started selling old electronics and toys online once I learned how. It became an obsession. I wondered why I enjoyed it so much. And you know what? It’s not because I was passionate about selling toys. It’s because I began to see that the path to success was not as linear as I’d been taught.
I’ve always been an outlier in this respect. I created an entire career out of gig work now in the entertainment industry – an industry built by people who understand that art is worth fighting for. But as I have learned, success in any field relies on supply and demand. It’s been a tough year for the industry, and certainly a tough year for my mental health. Yet, I consider this part of the journey, the adventure I continue to crave. The uncertainty about my future keeps me invested in my work, because I’m always open to new opportunities – an attitude I might not ever foster within the comforts of a traditional lifestyle. To each their own, but I’d rather struggle and do what I enjoy than grant somebody else control over my life under the illusion of job security.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m a travel blogger focused on solo independent travel, a local guide here in Los Angeles, an event videographer, and a camera assistant in the film industry. My work dives into the notion of travel from an informative perspective as I strive to educate others on how to know their resources and feel confident traveling alone. The main problem with the travel industry is that it romanticizes the concept of travel, presenting it to consumers as a novelty item you might get once or twice a year. The thing most people don’t realize is that traveling can often be cheaper than their weekly trip to the store if they know their resources. Furthermore, you don’t need to dedicate weeks away from your life to experience oversaturated tourist trap hotspots which will drain your bank account. I take a more integrative approach, showing that not only can you integrate traveling within your life, but that you can do so in a budget friendly way that does not sacrifice on comfort. It’s like using your extra cash to go buy new clothes at a mall, except that I’m going to buy plane tickets to a place. Same exact idea – it just requires reshaping your perspective on travel.
I host a fully-fledged travel blog which is organized more so as an archive of various destinations. I outline factual information about those destinations, things to do, ways to get around, helpful tips, and other niche guides that I think may be useful for potential visitors who want to learn more about those places. Here’s what makes my approach unique: everything I publish is entirely based on my own personal experience. All photos and videos on my website are my own, and all information I provide is based on firsthand experience. If I explain how to do something or get somewhere, you can feel confident in its accuracy because that means I have done it. This is the promise I make to my audience, and I often utilize social media as a principal avenue to share my findings in real-time. Much like on the blog, my social media platform is used as a source of information about the places I visit rather than being a collection of archetypal travel photos that merely show the places I visit.
What people need to know about me is that I’ll never stop seeking new adventures, which means that I will always be producing new content. I might still be a small platform amidst giants, but I’ve always been something of an underdog. My focus is to educate travel, not sensationalize it, and this is an approach I think is generally lacking in the social media landscape today. We live in an age when it has never been easier to navigate the world. I’m here to show you all the ways that you can do so and teach you a little more about places in the process.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
When Covid hit at the beginning of 2020, it was like a tsunami that popped up out of nowhere and wiped away everything I had built up to that point. Perhaps it was my mistake to build on a beach, but how could I not? The view was worth it while it lasted. I ended up homeless living out of my car, jumping from place to place as a nomad while living in a state of denial. I had just graduated with an English degree, and I was on track to teach English in China. It was January 2020, so their winter break was about to end. I had just gotten my visa, and I moved out of my apartment the same day that I flew to Phoenix to collect some documents before making the final leg to Shenzhen. Well, as it happens, I received the email about coronavirus impacting travel while I was in Phoenix. Just like that, I was no longer flying to Shenzhen. I was stuck in Arizona with no destination or place to return to.
My car was still chilling at a parking lot in Atlanta at the time, so naturally I did the first thing that anyone would do… called my friend in Philadelphia and flew there to stay for a week. I believed that the virus would pass quickly, which is why I did not stress out so much at first. I was okay with living out of my car in Atlanta after that initial week, because I truly held onto the hope that my ticket to China was just a few days away. That turned into a week, which turned into a month, at which point Covid invaded the US, and the entire world shut down. This was right after I booked an Airbnb for a month to get myself back on track and refocus on integrating back into the film production world. Double whammy!
I never made it to China. For months after that initial setback, I faded into depression and did absolutely nothing but watch my bank account slowly dwindle away. I didn’t even care anymore. I was angry, my personal life was a mess, and I had no vision for myself beyond the plan I had set out more than a calendar year prior. That was my mistake. I relied so heavily on that plan that my life course became tied to it. As the world started to open up again, I found myself forging a new life course through the film production world – one which I began exploring while signing up for food delivery services to make money. I allowed myself to be depressed and get through all those negative thoughts, and only once that passed could I begin to see new opportunity. Was I going to accept that I was only destined for one path in my life? In this case, my stubbornness and rebelliousness against the system became a motivator. One constant has always been that I despise somebody else telling me how to live my life. In 2020, that “somebody” came in the form of a pandemic.
If not for those hardships, I might not have ever grown a career in the film industry beyond the early hobby filmmaking stage. I might not have ever developed skillsets in camera technology or set production. I might not have even started my travel blog at all, despite the fact that I would have been traveling. This is why I maintain the perspective that we must remain vigilant and open to new opportunities. I mentioned that this has been a tough year for the film industry. But this time, I haven’t put all my eggs in that basket. I have other skills, and I have my own projects now. I won’t let myself go through all that again. Failure is a form of success, because through our challenges, we learn so much about what we are capable of. I know I did.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
I think it surprises many people to learn that I truly value my ability to be spontaneous more so than having a traditionally “stable” life. What I have realized is that the notion of a “stable life” is only a social construct and is completely relative. Who is to say that stability requires a home and a corporate job? What happens when that corporation decides to downsize and let you go? All of a sudden, your life falls apart because it was tied to another entity for so long, and that entity decided to cut you out. I don’t view that as stable at all. I feel that I harbor a pretty stable life in the sense that I live with intention, and I believe this is a much better metric for people to determine whether they are truly stable. Do you lead an intentional life focused on your goals? If we acknowledge that the lives we lead are made up mostly of responses to our circumstances, then it becomes easier to see stability not as a physical metric, but rather a mental and emotional one. This is how I encourage people to think about their lives, because I believe that by focusing so strongly on society’s definition of “physical stability,” most people never realize just how much they are capable of achieving.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.marcusjuno.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcus_juno/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarcusJuno
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-juno-663aa0260/