It's been a long time since I've made a journal, but I won't rant terribly much. There are others who are much better to learn about the state of things than me, who are more knowledgeable and more eloquent on such subjects.

Have you ever had the desire to draw or paint or do whatever creative thing and you just...can't? The motivation is there but some factor is holding you back, no matter how much you fail to figure out what that factor is? That's kinda been my life for the past while. I'll occasionally manage to sketch something or get a burst of ability to put out multiple sketches, but then it wanes again. It's also difficult to force myself to go through the process of getting everything to a point where it's shareable in places outside my friend circle. That's why I'll just sorta dump a bunch of art after a point so...sorry about that. ^^;

What I've come to realize is that there's a lot of external factors that have whittled down my desire to sketch in general. The NFT and Algorithmic Generation fiasco that is still ongoing. (AI, for those who will erroneously call it such.) The generally hostile state of humanity toward itself and the world and successively perpetuated disasters therein. On the smaller, more personal scale is feeling like I'm 'not allowed to draw' because of changes to my work environment in the past.

On the latter: I work in retail and for the longest time I was a front-end clerk (a cashier in common terms.) For many years we would have slow days and regular periods of time where there wouldn't be that much going on. During that time I would sketch in a notepad I would always keep with me just in case I needed one, or would read a story on my phone. The moment I would have customers that all would be set aside and I would focus on my work, no questions asked and no resistance to return to normal duties. Generally you're not supposed to do these things at a job but you're an absolute fool to believe they don't, and even worse if you believe that good management discourages such sanity-preserving practices. This changed, however, when the District Manager changed.

To put it plainly, they're the controlling sort who can and will blindly enforce rules and policy regardless of circumstance. They also *absolutely* make shit up and heckle people who aren't doing anything wrong, trying to tell them to do work that doesn't exist or is already done. Basically the mentality of 'you should always be working and doing something for the company even when all the work is currently done.' As such, given they like to hover around and I was getting increasingly heckled by management during my time as a cashier to look busy, I got less and less time to sketch or maintain sanity on slow days, let alone busy ones. It got to feeling like I just wasn't allowed to sketch.

Before anyone decides to jump on me, this sensation of 'being not allowed' followed me home after work. Stresses and depression basically instilled in me a habit of doing very little once I got home, if only to decompress and destress from the day. I've since changed positions at work so that I'm actually busy during much of the day, and I'm much happier in my current position! Old habits, as the saying goes, die hard though.

And with this introspection and thought today I realized that I couldn't blame anyone if they just...stopped making art or creative things in the current worldly environment. It's a miracle how many artists continue to do so and I cannot heap enough praise and appreciation on artists for it. Not only for persisting, but for creating and making the lives of others better in doing so. Even if you only make one piece every so often, even if it's a piece made just for yourself, when you share what you've created you do enrich someone's life. It might be just you, or one other person, or a hundred, or a thousand. You get the idea.

Appreciate the artists around you and all they make, and all they give. It takes a lot to do what they do.