The more I think about it the more I'm not sure what it is exactly that I miss? I miss being a part of a community where we could all draw together and just have that artistic interaction but then also my life and my schedule has drastically changed since I was active then. I also miss just doing art and being less anxious about it and overthinking it less.
Once I stopped trying to get into the animation field and kind of overall selling my art and doing commissions as a business I really got a lot better lifestyle wise. But my first kind of interaction with art other than something that you just do for fun was doing it in college as a degree because I literally didn't know what else I could do.
(I forget how to do a read more on mobile so bear with me til I can update it. I welcome conversation and replies!)
I found my strengths now in working with people and doing volunteer coordination and I genuinely do love what I do. But I still want to come back to art it's just hard when most of my relationship with it has been in a kind of capitalist perspective I guess.
I spend maybe half an hour looking at graphic novels at the bookstore the other day but every time I opened one and read some and was touched by bits of it or enjoyed it I had part of myself recoil and I had to put it down because I was just thinking about the dream that I feel like I abandoned.
I know in my head that I can still do art and I can still make comics and animation and stuff. But it's really really really hard to get to sink into my brain and to actually accept it.
I've been taking a break from doing art since March and the only thing that's really helped is doing a small bit of edible brownies. It just drops all the barriers and I can just make literally whatever. It doesn't matter what I may which is the wall I keep running into. I keep running into the wall that I feel like I have to have an idea ahead of time to make a piece of art and that's not usually how it works but whenever I've had a commission or an art piece I've done for like the communities I've been in there's always been like oh these ideas that you can just make and I just am not generating those in the same way anymore.
And when I do get a prompt it's usually very hard to make work and I get worked up in my brain ahead of time that no this isn't what I want to do or something and I don't even get to try it.
With the ADHD it's hard because nothing really feels right for doing most leisure things. I have the ADHD boredom really badly of "nothing feels right" And it's been especially hard the past maybe 4 months.
I'm driving to make something meaningful but I know not everything has to be finished or complete or have meaning to it. There's these comics about hamsters that I really love that are just like not making a huge difference in the world but they mean so much to me. I want to make something like that and I know I don't control what does or doesn't touch people in different ways and most things I think can't touch people and you'll probably never know about it.
I think I'm probably defining too much of my personal worth on my art that I create.
If I am able to make an art piece that touches someone to does something good in your life that feels like some kind of like qualifier for myself that I've done good but I don't have to do those things to do good.
It's not like a bad goal to have morally or whatever, but it's not something that's measurable and it's putting my own self worth dependent on an outside source which I'm trying not to do. I need to get my own positive self worth coming from myself.
I know my heart, my art, and myself are good enough as they are and they don't have to touch anyone to be something "good". I am enough just as I am. I don't need to be "more".
I've been trying to do art in different forms as well, but nothing quite sticks like digital art does. I have a million animations/animatics in my head that I want to do. But time and energy get in my way, so I need to push to make space for it all.
You know, I think the purest form of art I do is Contra Dancing. It's not monetized at all for me, in fact I donate money to do it. I get to be a part of these dances with people that we all create together and contradancing isn't the same if you have like very small groups of people. I go there simply to dance and to see people and to have fun and that's it. Because I enjoy it, and I enjoy the people.
Another thing was when I wore to the nursing home I spent over 200 hours of my own time playing bingo with the residents and running bingo games. That's art in itself, and we all had fun and played together!!
I can and do show my love in more ways than just digital art.
My digital art has always been tied to something I loved, be it star trek or my fascination with digital painting - much like solving a drawing puzzle.
The whole TriumviDate game was a huge labor of love!!!!!
I think I just need to reframe what digital art means to me in my head and what it looks like. It's not something I do to sell. It's not something I do for a career. (Nor do I want to)
It's a form of expression - One of many many different forms. It's a medium in which to say something and it doesn't even have to mean anything besides that I had fun making it.
All the regret I had when I think about the things I could have done and acting like that part of my life is over but it's really continuously going on. I am under a third of my lifespan If we go by the average lifespan which means (theoretically) I have over 2/3 of my life to keep going and figure things out.
There's so much to life and I just need to find a way to make art enjoy it have fun if I want to and to make it as barrier free as possible for me. I know something like that takes a lot of work - but I think it really would be worth it.
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