I've unpublished my patreon page. Staying away from online for a while. Will be on here for work stuff and aid for others :peace:
Addendum? Update? I'm unsure of the proper verbiage here and we're all going to have to live with it if either or both or neither are wrong and/or correct. Short version if you're not in for a short essay: Will still be not posting art very frequently if at all indefinitely! If I can get my shit together I may reup my Patreon in the meantime but that's an if. I'll be trying to work on lots and lots of stuff to share when I'm in a better place to return though...thanks! Long musings below:
I've been doing a lot of thinking about how I hate myself for not being able to drop my intense life-ruining self scrutinization and self filtering and watering myself down as a learned behavior from growing up being treated subhuman unless I performed very particularly. This still happens to me but online I need to cut this shit out because, as said, it is life-ruining. It kind of disgusts me how much I can see hallmarks of very particular "online" conventions, shorthands, symbols...whatever....in my works. It's an ingrained behavior borne of my teenage self's desire to have my work be liked so I can succeed. Because nobody in my life liked me and I was desparate for any kind of outside validation that I was worth caring about. Very sad etc etc...but it's so incredibly disingenuous! My hand and mind are trained to automatically default to these sorts of things as a defense mechanism - which i know sounds insane to say about art but it's important to keep in mind that I'm an insane person. My confidence has been entirely reliant on other peoples' opinion of me and being genuine has not been recieved well in my past. It's unfortunate and I don't need to get into the tremendous traumas I have gone through in my life that tie into this but essentially I'm kind of fucked. There is a level of barredness I have - degree of separation? Inability to reach in to what I want to achieve and how to get there. There are several blocks in place that keep me from engaging with the ways I want to work and create with the level of intention and areas of thought I need to actively participate in to actually foster novelty instead of automated pattern repetition. I have a huge amount of work to do in order to overcome this and social media is just not a healthy environment for this at this time because I'm also incredibly compulsive lol. I am in a situation where I legitimately have to learn how to, and practice, the tasks of "having fun" and "liking myself" simultaneously. My work would improve vastly were I to be able to succeed in this. I think. I hope! I'm held back by a lot of things, a lot of which are out of my control....but this is something I do need to take control of to improve my life first and foremost; which will have compounding returns. I have a lot of ideas that I shut down while they are still in their nascency because I think a hypothetical guy would think they are stupid. That's no way to live. I need to free myself before I start sharing my work again because that's the kind of work I want to make, anyways. Why would I make and share things that reinforce my restraints? I have never been a "Popular Artist." I know I am not well-liked and that I am an online nobody. I'm painfully aware of this. I'd like to at least be a nobody in my own element creating real things from my heart or whatever instead of being a nobody holding up a mask asking everybody if they like it better. It's difficult. I am in great distress over this constantly! I'm embarrassed of typing this and posting it but it's uh, kinda the point, for me to do it anyways. Maybe someone else understands. Probably someone else understands. If you, too, are someone stuck in this arena I hope you can find your peace as well. You have to make art even if it's not what everyone wants to see on the internet. It's what some people want to see and it will impact those people the most instead of, say, a lot of people very fleetingly. I want you to make that art and I do mean this earnestly even as a stranger that I want you to make it because it is what you have to do to live and breathe! I also hope to be able to live and breathe after putting in the work to do so. Thank you, if you've taken the time out of your day to read this all.
