Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Magege.
Hi Paul, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
To begin, I suppose I have to start from when me and my family immigrated here when I was about 3 years old so my dad could build a home in Maryland for us to live in but due to financial and legal issues, he decided to go back to my homeland of Tanzania to focus on his business management tasks to provide money for us overseas. Since 2004, I can say life has been a rollercoaster for me and my mom, brother and sister in terms of financially, physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally and my mother was the one woman sergeant who was in charge of 3 loud, goofy, good-hearted, energetic kids and had to make a way in a land where she knew no one. Fast forward, 18 years and I am proud to say I am here standing because of all the hard work she put in and the sacrifices she made for me to chase a life I can be proud of.
I am Paul Sebastian Magege Jr., I am 20 years old, Free-spirited, calm, funny, hard-working, anxious, and a determined Tanzanian immigrant here on his way to developing a business. I am a 3rd year student at Towson University who has been through a lot of misfortune and have been through pleasure too and all of it has made me the man I am today. There are a lot of events I can not write here on this page today but the main thing I want you to take away from my story is this: “in life we are all given the family we get, and the circumstances in which we get them Is not always the best but is it YOUR job to make the best out of the hand you were dealt and not to sulk in the past. Create your own future and do it differently from whatever you’ve lived through before.”
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
If I said it was a smooth road, I would be lying. I have faced poverty, mental health issues with my family, mental health issues within myself trying to navigate life sometimes and a lot of the issues that a young black man faces in today’s society especially being raised by a single mother. I believe in terms of challenges, when I was younger I faced weight problems and watching my mom struggle by herself only worsened that for me and my siblings and this was the source for a lot of my self-esteem and confidence issues when I was a child. I can vocal and honest about it now because I lived through and I am far from the boy I was but growing up, I can truly say the mental daily battle is always much stronger than the physical.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In plain words, I make visual art with camera photos. I am an artist more than a photographer and I enjoy just capturing moments and making them as aesthetically appealing as possible so that I can look back and enjoy them just as much as my friends, family and audience can. I specialize in camera and photo editing and I am known for being able to make “cool pictures.” I guess what people mean by that is I can take my photos and create a story and make it look cool, beautiful.
I am most proud of the fact that this was all really unplanned but I have some great people in my life who told me I have a gift and I am proud of the fact other people enjoy my pictures as much as I do when I look back on the memory. I think what sets me apart is I’m really capturing my life, it’s not fiction and it’s not a plain picture of some random aesthetic. You can feel the raw story I create in every post and I am not trying to be anything I’m not, I’m literally showing the life I live and its not always glamorous, in fact, it rarely ever is but through my pictures you can see it through my eyes, my lens and hopefully through the slideshows it becomes real to you.
How do you think about luck?
Good luck has gotten me this far, I am alive, young, healthy and I have the knowledge and opportunity to make a way for me and my family and to me, I am so grateful for that and in terms of my business, me being able to reach people and have them inspire me and compliment me and to have a position where I can inspire the right way, that is the greatest luck of all. For a long time, I felt like all I had was bad luck in life but after landing where I am today, I can see bad luck is just a lesson to learn and grow from and for my business, I hope to not have too much bad luck but I know that there are a low of downs to entrepreneurship that I am anticipating. I just started this in January of 2022 so I have a lot of time to go but I hope the role of luck is in my favor.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifeofpjr/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifeofpjr
Image Credits
Paul Sebastian Magege Jr.
