New Year Post 2025?
The new year is a time for reflection and honestly, I have no idea what to do and I'm scared. Trying to find some career path or sense of purpose has been difficult since I still haven't found the thing that lights me up and gets me excited, especially not enough to get me through the parts of the thing that are actually just Work.
Videogames were kind of a bust. Not an industry I can or would want to get into, and so I just have these half-baked solo dev projects that aren't good or popular. Then there's my original intent of writing and just making the stories I want to make, but that kind of fell flat, too. It's the most like work out of any hobby I have. Then I guess it has to be drawing, but that's more of an obsession at this point. I don't know how much fun I'm actually having when doing it. More than writing, at least.
The world of drawing is certainly a lot kinder. I can get instant feedback on a piece of work and recognition it was seen at all, and most tutorials are typically very friendly and constructive, with long lists of things to try and ways to break problems down into steps. Meanwhile it's such an ordeal to get anyone to read something and every tutorial amounts to "i hate you, the viewer, and i want to hurt you. here are fifteen things that are Killing Your Bad Novel". Miserable.
This all circles back to being desperate to make the things I want to make. It feels kind of immature and petulant but there really isn't anything else I want to do. However, and this probably readily apparent, I hate myself a lot. When I'm stuck in the loop of working on my own thing and having to look at it for months on end I start to rush through it. Just get the damn thing done so I don't have to look at it anymore. So, of course, it ends up being Bad and the self-loathing spiral continues. I crunch out some low-effort garbage and think "is this really my limit? have i been wasting my time?"
I think about the famous phrase "if you can't be bothered to care about the thing then why should i?", and yeah, I agree. It makes me scared to think that could be the rest of my life, going through the motions on the next visual novel and tossing out some trash nobody will read since I stopped caring about it after a month. I thought I might actually be ok with that, just steadily moving forward on a project and enjoying the process as I share it with others, but I'm too goal-oriented when it comes to creating.
I want it all to just be done. But there are so many things that are done and out there already, what's the point of sacrificing so much of my health and sanity for my own work? I look at my lineup of characters on artfight and wonder if any of these idiots really needs to exist in a completed work of fiction...but don't I want to be making complete works? Wouldn't it be better if I just gave up? Sometimes I wish I'd get involved in a horrible accident that stops me from using my drawing arm so I'd have an excuse to quit outright...but then what would I do with my life?
So, I kind of want to study art more seriously this year. There's so much I don't know that makes my process slow and painful. I have to zoom in so much to make lines connect, and I don't understand how to draw with my shoulder. There's something intrinsic I'm just missing, other people can convey form and gesture or make a little rough sketch with real Energy to it so why shouldn't I be able to do it too?
I can't and won't make a career out of art but if I can develop some amount of confidence with it maybe I can get through all my visual novel graphics before I inevitably start to hate the thing and forget what drove me to start. Maybe I'll feel a bit more connected to artists around me if I can draw shapes and forms and not just wobbly lines with no expression.
My other two resolutions are to interact with others more, just talk during groupdraw or in general. I get so caught up in my own world that I often neglect the world around me. There are other people who want others to like their work just like I do, and I want to like their stuff! I want to get out of my own head and regain some humanity, I think.
Also, I want to get more variety into my life. My rotation of youtube music I have on when drawing is pretty rigid, and I'm not doing much else all day. A lot of why I feel stuck is probably due to that. I've got to have more going on, really. Who knows, maybe I'll find the thing that ignites my soul for real and I'll forget all about drawing and writing.
It feels pretty dire, but I think these are reasonable steps in a positive direction. Here's hoping I feel even 1% better at the end of 2025 than I do at the start.