Through the lens of my forty-year-old self, who wants to continue working authentically, I share the profound and new beauty discovered through years of steady dedication in one field, across five columns. Working in this industry, I sometimes realize that experience is more fragile than we’d like to admit—a shell that cracks far more easily than you’d think. It looks smooth and polished on the surface, but scratch it lightly with a fingernail, and it feels like it might peel away entirely. There are days when I flinch, worried that someone might notice. Years of work don’t make you immune to mistakes, and accumulated experience doesn’t mean you can predict every variable.


Sometimes one tiny crack can bring down all the confidence you’ve built in yourself. The self-deprecating thought “If I’d known I was this fragile, I shouldn’t have acted like I knew what I was doing” flits through my mind.

Around this time last year, the filming location for HERA’s YouTube series Color Exploration had a certain austere beauty. Natural light brushed the walls with an expressionless touch, and the old table and chairs quietly bore the marks that time had left on them. The walls had the texture of a thin theater set—reality displaced by half a step. (Nailed it!)

Sometimes a space feels like it’s training the people in it, and that day’s studio seemed to quietly encourage us: “This is going to turn out well, isn’t it?” After composing shots against countless backgrounds, I’d grown to love these kinds of settings. The way warmth quietly emerges among objects that say nothing... Placing a vibrant person in a space that doesn’t overassert its presence, steadying the camera’s breathing while fidgeting with objects—these are the moments I love completely.

But strangely, whenever everything becomes perfect, I inevitably sense it: “Where will things go wrong this time?” Shoots always have gaps somewhere, and those gaps show up more reliably than you’d expect.

This time, it was the sound of the train. Vibrations slipped through the walls, periodically cutting into the grain of the conversation. My instinct was clear: “This is a problem...” But that resignation peculiar to someone who’s worked a long time nudged me forward—”Ah well... let’s just push through.” The excitement and nervousness I’d felt as a beginner had faded beneath the arrogance of thinking I could solve anything.

2 Where Human Warmth Seeps Into the Frame

That day, we were filming with Jiyoung, a PhD researcher who’d developed the ‘Sensual Nude Balm,’ appearing as a guest. It was thanks to Kyungjin, the series’ signature MC and the embodiment of technical communication, who’d overcome several rejections to secure the booking. Laboratory language is inherently refined through experiments, failures, and documentation—it takes time to translate to the pace of ordinary speech. I’m the kind of person who waits for that time with anticipation. I quietly watch for the moment when breathing steadies, rhythm aligns, and the texture of words unfurls.

Midway through, just as the conversation found its rhythm, Jiyoung said something casually:
“Ceramides are too close to each other. So (making a separating gesture with her hands) you have to tell them, ‘You all need to stay apart.’"
It was one of those distinctly transparent moments when the specialized world suddenly tunes its frequency to yours. Too scientific, too charming, too accessible—I held my breath for a moment. “Ah, today really went well.” That’s what I thought. Until I opened the file a few days later.

The moment I opened the editing software, the rattling of the train flashed through my mind first. Intuition is always honest. And there it was—the audio file had disappeared. The voices that should have been captured clearly by the wireless mic had vanished, leaving only reverberations, fragmenting like underwater sounds, in the camera’s built-in mic. Jiyoung’s voice was barely maintaining its shape, floating somewhere behind the noise. (...oh no)

When I listened to that file again in the editing room, I came face to face with the most vulnerable core of my work. The fact that I’d failed to protect a story someone had shared with difficulty. In that moment, I wasn’t ‘the composed producer’—I was just ‘someone flailing.’ (Though honestly, that’s probably closer to who I really am.)

3 The Endurance to Repair What’s Broken

Strangely, as my head cleared, the first thing that surfaced wasn’t regret but a question:
“Just how much can I actually hold together?”
A producer’s days go wrong far more often than they go right, and yesterday’s instincts frequently fail to work today. I’ve come to believe that real skill isn’t the ability to avoid mistakes, but ‘how long you can hold yourself together after making them.’ I’ve learned clearly through my work that this is what endurance means.

I started reaching out to post-production sound specialists. After several polite rejections and lukewarm responses, one person finally said:
“Hmm... It’s not completely impossible.”
Those words sounded almost like salvation itself. Peeling away the train sounds layer by layer and reconstructing the voice’s scattered frequencies took several days. It wasn’t perfect, but watching the story take shape again, I accepted for the first time that “even a broken voice is still a voice.”

The cracks remained, but the atmosphere of that day came back to life at exactly the right temperature. Work often manages to survive within that imperfection. That’s another experience I took away from a day at work.

4 As Someone Who Pieces Things Back Together

Since then, small rituals have developed. Checking studio soundproofing, test recordings, and backup verification. I would have called these procedures ‘caution’ before, but now it’s somewhat different.

It’s less about defending against mistakes and more like a resolution left behind by the experiences of piecing broken moments back together. I haven’t told anyone this, but I think those processes are the true grain of my professional life. A pattern that’s quieter but longer-lasting than visible credentials—the kind no one else recognizes but that I know with complete clarity.

These days, I find myself pausing for no apparent reason while setting up equipment. Sometimes I sense a tiny crack slipping past somewhere. Those gaps will always come around again, and I’ll quietly blame myself while gathering the pieces. (sobbing) When I think about it, there’s something about it that makes my heart shake oddly.

I’ll probably keep working this way—as someone who looks perfectly balanced on the surface while secretly letting intimate tremors pass through, unnoticed by anyone else. Sometimes with finesse, sometimes shakily as my ridiculousness gets exposed—but ultimately as someone who stands things back up. Through that quiet process of embracing broken moments and reassembling them, I continue learning how to work.