It’s been a while, I guess it’s worth starting over.
The primary reason for writing here again is to document. My life is going in so many unexpected directions that it’ll be nice for it all to live somewhere in a consolidated, linear fashion.
Perhaps the biggest update in my life is that Humai and I have started a business called HAPPYMONDAY. It’s a content studio that produces video and photography campaigns for the social, mobile experience. The importance of social media has created this new need in the market and we are perfectly positioned to service it. The inception and growth of this company happened quite organically and in just over two years we’ve worked on some incredible projects with exceptional clients. Though it takes up all of my time, HAPPYMONDAY is the thing I’m most excited about.
I’ll get more into what HAPPYMONDAY does and how we were able to grow it to where it’s at today. That’s my secondary reason for documenting, I want to share what I have been learning in an effort to inspire and help others who may be on the same journey. More on that soon.
So, let’s play catch up. Here is what you need to know:
I was born in Pakistan but grew up in Coney Island, Brooklyn.
I’ve being studying photography seriously since high school.
I created a body of work documenting the Muslim American experience post 9/11 that won national awards and was the impetus for NYU changing their decision on my acceptance. I studied Photography and Digital Imaging during undergrad.
After NYU, I started a clothing line called VANE that popped off and had a global audience. We sold our products on every continent at major retailers and had a retail store in the Lower East Side of NYC that we changed the design of every 6 months.
After a few unfortunate events in a moment of clarity I realized I didn’t want to commit my life to fashion so I pivoted. I wanted to shift my focus back to visuals.
I applied to one graduate school program in the entire world and got accepted. The Interactive Telecommunications Programs (ITP), also at NYU, where I studied the intersection of art and technology, user experience design and new media storytelling.
At some point while in grad school I met Humai and 3 years into dating we got married.
After ITP I worked as a freelance photographer and videographer, became quite successful at it.
My work grew bigger than I could manage at which point HAPPYMONDAY was conceived and we start working on building a team to help support the scale of projects we had.
Fashion was familiar to me so we dove head first into that industry and quickly made a name for ourselves.
I went to London/Paris/Milan fashion week with no jobs or contacts 6 years ago and now find myself with my whole team traveling to Europe every season to work on some incredible projects.
What we do is not specific to fashion so we are actively expanding into other industries.
2 years ago we partnered with Spotify on creating content for their social platforms and started working heavily in the music industry.
We are a 6 person team operating from an office in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The team is strong af.
Business is booming and I’m incredibly thankful to be in this position. (I wrote this before COVID-19 hit, I’ll get into all that later)
I want to be honest here though. All big wins come with struggles, sacrifice and hardships. In fact, it was easier being a freelancer, it was easier to just be responsible for myself. I am now responsible for my team and the success of our business. It’s an incredible amount of pressure.
I’m working even when it looks like I’m not. How busy I am comes with a price:
I don’t see my family enough.
I have no social life. Aside from a hand full of people, I’m not even sure I’m still friends with some people I used to be really close with.
I travel constantly, every two weeks I would say, so I’m never home. The rhythm and flow of my mind and body always feels off. Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling and exploring but most of what we do is landing in another country, working and then getting out. There is little time for exploration or enrichment through the experience of new culture or people.
Vacations are rare.
I always have to be on and available to my team and my clients. This is exhausting. When I was freelancing I’d turn off when I got home but I no longer can do that. Too many time sensitive things rely on my input.
Having no schedule makes it so hard to be on any sort of workout routine. I could probably try harder and fix this but it’s very challenging for me to eat and stay healthy.
I’m homesick a lot. I miss sleeping in my own bed.
I say all this to create some sort of balance in my personal narrative. You all see a lot of what I post on Instagram which is the glory of it all... the highlight moments. The in-between moments when all the work is happening is probably the most important and that is what I’m here to talk about.
I hope that you all find some value in what I’m going to start here but since I’d like for this to be a conversation please feel free to drop me a note or hit me with any questions you have about my life and work: atifateeq@gmail.com
I’ll try to answer as much as I can here.
It feels good to share, now let’s hope I don’t flake out or get too busy to keep doing this.
✌🏽
