In early 2018 I was really fed up with my job in the corporate world, as many of us are. When you work for one entity/brand as a designer and photographer, you quickly run out of ideas for that brand and feel like you hit a wall. It's not entirely an issue with the company but branding in general. As a business you need to maintain one brand look and feel to gain a reputation amongst customers. However, that means using the same creative style for years if not decades, not being able to try anything new or creative or "change things up". I worked freelance off and on for many years as a little side thing to keep creativity flowing and to challenge myself. I always dreamed of starting my own company. If I was freelancing anyways, why not have a company behind that to build and maybe someday replace my corporate job?
I didn't do anything for months because I was scared to go through the process of forming a company, and I didn't have a name for it. I kept using that as an excuse for not starting down a path towards my dream lifestyle. Over and over I would say "I could but I don't have a name." One day my husband was probably a bit fed up with my excuses and said "What about Sonder?"
Sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
I never heard of this word but instantly fell in love with it. From what I can tell, the word initially appeared in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows on their website but also on their youtube page (a new favorite of mine).
This was the perfect name for our business. I've always thought about other people's lives, what they do in their free time, who they know, how they feel, but never knew there was a word for this thought or idea. It was also a great name for a photography business where we momentarily enter people's lives to capture these moments. I got so inspired by our new name for our company that on that same day I registered our business name and did all the paperwork and filing for the business. All the fear of government red tape and how to run a business completely disappeared. Creating the business honestly wasn't too hard either - mental walls are usually the hardest thing to overcome, even today.
Years later, I still think of that moment and what it means to our clients. My hope is that we can truly be an added part of our clients' lives to capture their most important moments and milestones.