Omar Dean

Happy 52nd birthday to my life bestie 🤗

The beauty of your 30s:

You stop explaining yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you.

Peace becomes more important than being understood.

You outgrow the need to be seen correctly by everyone.

Your energy stops being available to everything.

You don’t force alignment - you move where it exists.

Being misunderstood stops feeling like a threat.

You stop shrinking to make things make sense to others.

Not everyone gets access to you anymore and that’s okay.

You choose what feels right over what looks right.

You stop negotiating with what drains you.

You begin to honour yourself, at whatever cost.

Some truths about this industry people don’t always see:

• The rejections outweigh the opportunities. You can do everything right, be great, and still not be chosen, due to politics, profit, convenience, and favouritism.

• Most auditions, castings, and submissions are met with silence: no feedback, no callback, no response, after hours of effort + preparation. Ghosted. “We’ll be in touch” oftentimes means you’ll never hear from us again.

• Managers and directors often want control, and if you’re not someone they can benefit from, manipulate, or mould to their advantage, you become a threat and get pushed aside or labelled “difficult”.

• I’ve witnessed artists, especially women, be objectified and mistreated by egos in power, where fear and intimidation is used as a tactic for exploitation and opportunities are made conditional. Professional boundaries are violated more times than not.

• Contracts are never in artists favour.

• Knowing your worth can cost you because quality comes at a price, and most aren’t willing to meet it. Convenience is often chosen over quality. Good artists work less.

• There’s little to no protection for artists. Late/no payment, underpayment, unpaid forced leave, no sick or emergency leave, and overworking are the norm.

• The moment a crisis hits, everything stops. Work, income, stability- gone, and you can do nothing about it. Things you spent years building can disappear overnight, through no fault of your own and there is no system to save you.

• Literally nobody cares about your wellbeing or integrity. You’re just a number for someone else’s profit.

• There is no real stability, no loyalty, no guarantees, and barely any integrity or morals in the industry itself.

• At some point, you have to separate your self-worth, values, and expectations from the outcome, or this industry will entirely break you.

• And whats crazy to me is that this is one of the most consumed industries in the world, built entirely on artists - yet artists are the most undervalued part of it.

• Despite all this, I’d keep choosing my art, because nobody (especially not an inadequate industry) can determine my fate and purpose but me.

I wish I could heal the world but I’m just one voice amongst many 💔