The artist who graduates from a VFX program is not the same person who will do their best work five years later.

What I've watched consistently is that the artists who grow most significantly aren't the ones who found their direction early and stuck to it without deviation. They're the ones who stayed honest about when something that once fit had stopped fitting, and were willing to let that version of themselves go without treating it as a failure.

Alignment shifts as you develop. The studio you wanted to work at, the type of work that excited you, the role you thought you were building toward, all of it is subject to change as your understanding of yourself deepens. That's not inconsistency. That's growth working correctly.

The difficult part is that letting go of who you thought you were has no clean process and no obvious timeline. It tends to happen gradually, then all at once, and usually feels like losing ground before it feels like gaining any.

What's on the other side of that process is a clearer, more durable version of your direction. One that fits who you actually are, not who you started out trying to become.