Sheena Vaught

I attribute my success to God and just having faith. I have a family that's also artists. My mom's an artist, my dad's an artist, my sister also sings and she's a creative as well, so we're pretty much like the avant-garde people in our community. Especially with my mom, she just believed that, hey, you can do it. It was never the mentality of, like, oh, no, you can't do that. Having that faith in Christ that I could do all things through Him really gives me the strength to keep going, even though sometimes it can be very hard, and sometimes unbearable, where you just want to give up. But I have to remember, I can't give up because I have gifts for a reason. God didn't give me a gift just to waste it. He gave me a gift to use it, and it would be a shame not to do that.

The best advice I ever received came from my sister. I had this gift someone gave me, and I kept it for years even though I didn't like it because I thought it was thoughtful. My sister came to my place one day and was helping me organize, and I was telling her about the gift. She said, Shayna, you don't have to keep what people give you. That struck with me, because people will do a lot in life. They'll give you bad advice, they will intimidate you, they will do all kinds of things to you, they'll make you feel like you're not worth anything, that you have no value. For me, it had nothing to do with the gift, but it had everything to do with people will load you with stuff and they will give you negative things, and you don't have to keep it. You don't have to carry it around. You don't have to hang it up wherever you go. If I look at something and what someone tried to give me in a situation, like intimidation, people try to intimidate me a lot to not do and be who God has called me to be, I have to push off that intimidation, throw it away, and be like, I'm not going to keep this. I am not going to feel less than, I am not going to feel devalued, because you can't see my value. I will not keep what you have given me.

I would tell them to make sure that they have a firm faith foundation, because what I've learned is that life can look different in a second. And that's not even being like, oh, someone's passed away. It's like, no, people walk away. People choose not to be in your life, and you thought that those were some strong connections. There are things that are built to really tear you down. So, having a strong faith foundation and having strong mental health is another thing, because we women, with our bodies and stuff like that, our hormones, we go through a lot. There's a lot of care for women, but there's not enough care for women. We're going through some things internally, and the world seems like we're losing our minds. It's like, no, we're not losing our minds. This is something that's really going on inside of us, and there's really no help for it, just to medicate you. So, I would just say, have a strong circle, have a strong faith foundation, and really stay on top of your health and your mental awareness.

The biggest challenge is AI because it's both a threat and an opportunity at the same time. AI has been helpful for me. There's a new project I want to start working on and filming, hopefully next year, and it's helped me create promotional materials that I wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise.

However, I'm not a big proponent of relying on AI because art is expression, and it's something people need to do themselves. There is value in the creative process and in experiencing it firsthand. Art has to be worked through, and there is something therapeutic about that process.

For example, I created a short film called My Last Goodbye, which was inspired by a real life experience. Writing that film was cathartic for me. I completed the script in about two and a half hours, and it served as an important emotional outlet. Writing is a gift and a form of expression, and if AI is doing the work for us, we lose part of that experience. As creators and audiences, we cannot fully connect with art in the way we're meant to.

At the same time, creative projects can be very expensive, and AI helps reduce some of those barriers. There is a duality to it. It can be both beneficial and concerning, depending on how it is used.

One is to try to keep God first in everything. And I don't say that as someone who's just this religious person. I say that as someone who really, truly likes to walk and commune with God. I just found in my life that doing things his way is so much better. Being honest, having integrity, being trustworthy, respecting people, loving people, honoring people. It's so much better, even when others don't do it to you. It's just better to do things this way, because at the end of the day, he's the one who sees what's going on, and he'll take care of it. And respecting people is so important to me.