The Unknown - The Version of Yourself Nobody Has Seen Yet

Office Hours with Patrick

Stuck on your website, portfolio, pricing, marketing, or business strategy?

Office Hours is a one-on-one, 60-ish minute conversation to help you work through whatever you’re trying to figure out. No agenda. No curriculum. No pitch. Just honest feedback, thoughtful questions, and a fresh perspective.

Learn more or book your session:

https://theterriblecreative.com/office-hours

This is the last one.

Four episodes. Four quadrants. Four different ways of asking the same question: who are you — really — when nobody's grading you?

In the final episode of the Johari Window series, Patrick texts eight people the same question without defining the word first. A photographer in Texas who's bored at events but wants the money. A friend who performs down to what shoes she puts on. A pastor in Iowa who said he doesn't feel fake — and then sent a follow-up voice note from a friend's house over Long Island iced teas that changed everything.

Not one person said they don't perform. Not one.

The Unknown is the fourth quadrant. In the original model it was framed as a limitation — territory nobody has access to. Patrick thinks that's the wrong way to look at it. Especially for creatives. Especially for people making personal work in the gaps between the jobs that pay the rent.

This episode is about the version of yourself that exists underneath all the other versions. The one that neither you nor anyone else has fully seen yet. The one that isn't always good. Isn't always safe. Isn't always received.

And why you might make something from there anyway.

In this episode:

Eight people, one question, no definition provided. What performing actually means when you ask people who have been doing it their whole lives. The pastor who works every day to keep two versions of himself close enough to touch. The stylist Patrick hired because he fell for the full version of her on Instagram — and what the transaction cost. The irony of finding more of yourself in a podcast garage than in a building founded on the radical idea that humans should show up whole. The serial killer problem and the Pokemon Go executive — and the question neither of them can answer. Why the Johari Window isn't a self-help tool. It's a mirror. And mirrors show you everything. The 16 year old, the 21 year old, the 31 year old — and who Patrick has been making this for all along.

The Johari Window — the complete series:

Episode 57 — The Glass House: The Arena. Visibility versus being known. Episode 58 — The Tell: The Blind Spot. What everyone around you already knows. Episode 59 — The Facade: What you hide. What it costs. Episode 60 — The Unknown: The version of yourself that doesn't exist yet. And why you make something anyway.

On Harrington:

Back in episode one Patrick pushed back on the model. Said the Arena requires two people. That you can't open the door alone and expect to be known.

He still believes that.

But Harrington was right about the window itself. It's neutral. It's just glass. It shows you what's there. It doesn't tell you which parts are good and which are dangerous. It doesn't sort the rooms for you.

What you do with what you see — that's on you.

If this series landed somewhere:

Email Patrick. He reads everything and responds to most of it. The emails that cost something to send are the ones he remembers longest.

patrick@terriblephotographer.com

Connect:

Website: terriblephotographer.com
The Book — Lessons From A Terrible Photographer: terriblephotographer.com/the-book
Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support
Newsletter — Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb
Instagram — The Terrible Creative: @terriblephotographer
Instagram — Patrick Fore: @patrickfore

The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Episode photography from Adobe Stock and Unsplash. Recorded from a garage in San Diego, California.