Hello world

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Almost 10 (!!!) years ago, I embarked on a project that would unknowingly change my life.

I grew up as a competitive singer and for most of my life, I only saw one side of music: the one where you belt onstage, get critiqued by people (in the competitions I joined, you’d be lucky if they were actual musicians…), and be evaluated based on arbitrary standards.

Now if you sing in competitions, mad respect for you. 

I just felt, in my opinion, that there was something fundamentally missing.

So when I joined a local and original musical nearly a decade ago, it shone light on a whoooole different side of music—one where I ceased to perform and began to tell stories.

Like literally. 

The musical was about stories.

The premise centred on a character who, from a very young age, struggled to find where to start with writing a story for homework #TheStruggleIsReal. Encouraged by her ever-supportive mom, the main character attempts again by writing it line by line. She was probably struggling to turn off “edit mode”. Writers, you know the deal.

Fast forward some years later and our character has grown up to be a poised, smart, beautiful young lady. (Can you guess which character I played?) 

On track to graduating from university as valedictorian, she couldn’t help but feel as if her life had yet to start.

And she doesn’t…at least not until an unexpected event forced her to re-evaluate what’s truly important in life and start “re-writing” her story line by line.

And friend, isn’t that something?

Isn’t it our tendency to cling to comfort until such a time that we’re forced to re-evaluate?

For me, the pandemic served as the catalyst to re-evaluate a lot of what I thought was important…

Like busy schedules, doing work for the sake of work, putting work over people, etc.

But it was also during the pandemic that I re-learned the beauty of connecting with people from different backgrounds and with different capabilities.

I re-learned that work, in its proper place, is always meant to serve people.

CONTRAST Collective Co. was born out of a desire to serve people where they frequent the most—the digital space. CONTRAST aims to empower those at the forefront of these spaces—business owners, creatives, solopreneurs—to create beautiful, aesthetic websites that serve as many people with different levels of vision as possible, all while keeping the lights on.

Because serving people well should sustain the people that you serve and also yourself/your family.

It’s a tall order and starting is always the hardest part, as my character in the musical portrayed. 

But we have to start somewhere. 

So in case we haven’t met yet—hello world. 

We’re CONTRAST Collective Co.

And we can’t wait to start.