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I feel very lost
2 years ago
My Journal
Hey everyone.
I haven’t made a journal in a month so I’ll give another rundown.
In a couple days all of the fall 2022 and spring 2023 graduates in college get to have graduation ceremony. I’ll be there and officially officially graduate then.
It feels good to be done but I’m in a position where I still don’t know what I want to do in life. I’ve wanted to be an artist, creating cool things and being able to work with amazing teams on projects larger than life itself. I think that dream has ended. Or rather, changed. As more artificial intelligence takes industry jobs and with the current geopolitical climate, I think getting a professional career in the arts is quite a dead end. I could still be a niche artist though, but there’s no money in that market. Eventually I’ll have to just settle for something local, which would probably be the smarter decision.
This all leads into something overarching I wanted to vent about. I feel very lost right now as a person, as a furry, and as a creator.
In my personal life I probably feel the most lost. I’m 21 yet I feel like I barely know what to do. My family wants me in all these different directions, from following my dreams to staying home and helping them out indefinitely. To be fair to the latter, my mother is nearing 60 and my grandmother 80. They need all the help they can and I’m glad to help them. Though family opinions clash and I feel in the middle. They all have different expectations for me. I’ve been so hesitant to follow any plan, so I’ve been sorta waiting until something comes. Probably leads to nowhere and nothing, as well as further feeling like I don’t do anything and that I’m supposed to be more grown up, but if I jump into something I have to make sure it works otherwise it will either be a waste of time or money, things that are kinda in short supply as of late.
I wish I could just go where I want to go in life while caring for family but I worry I cannot do both. I wish to leave my town and head somewhere else, but I know that it would be bad to leave family behind. I wish to get art job, but I know I won’t make enough to help them out. It’s a frustrating feeling in my life now, like I’m in limbo or something. It sucks.
Another place I feel lost in is in this fandom. I already knew a whole back I’m never gonna make any ripples in this vast fandom but now im not even sure whether I should toss a pebble into the vast ocean that is this fandom even. An ocean that is perpetually toxic in mindset and alienating in feeling. Yes, this fandom has helped me a lot over the years, more than any therapist at the very least. But at the same time it’s very difficult to say whether that same feeling is true as it was when I was younger. Maybe I’ve got wiser, or maybe I’ve been on furry Twitter too long, but all I’ve seen is people flipping out over the smallest details and turning on each other. “You have to agree with exactly my view or you aren’t my friend anymore” type of Pre-K bs mindset. Everyone throwing around extremely harmful labels like they are cuss words to hurt other folk. Plus the amount of transphobic and bigoted folk who get away with saying seriously screwed up things is appalling. It’s why I’ve barely posted art on Twitter and why this is my only place I post now. (There is the recent controversy with this site but I won’t get into that). With all I’ve seen on Twitter and Discord servers, loosing friends, seeing arguments unfold, etc. I think it’s best I stay in my little corner of the fandom, or at least build that little corner. Cause I don’t think I feel connected to the fandom at large anymore. I just feel so lost, feel like I’m doing something wrong or something that everyone will find a way to hate me for. I know it’s probably not so, but my stress level is definitely effecting how I see things. I don’t feel like fighting folk, I just want to vibe and post.
Lastly I wanna say I feel lost as a creator. I’ll admit, I enjoy making art, but I certainly don’t have the same drive I did when I was younger. It’s why I’d be terrible with commissions and also only do requests from servers and not here. I have a big worry I let everyone down by taking so long. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s that I just don’t have the urge, or that if I rush it will look bad. I don’t feel happy with rushing. Though sadly sometimes that’s the only way I’ll finish something. It’s an uphill battle, something I feel stressed with more and more. I constantly compare myself to my past. How I could sketch so much a day, how I could ANIMATE with just a laptop pen in the middle of high school study hall. Make a bunch of YouTube videos, feel like I’m making a positive impact, etc. While I can draw better now everything feels much slower and an effort now. Again I want to do it, but it just feels so much. I can barely edit videos now. Videos I wanted to work on I’ve been working on for YEARS and they’re still not out. Probably won’t anyway. And now with AI, various art websites and their restrictions and toxicity, social media being a corporate slog, art theft, and furries being furries, it gets so frustrating to post anything anymore. I just struggled to post on e6 cause I didn’t know what I was doing, only to watch in real time the image get deleted because “quality was poor”. It’s demotivating as shit. Posting and being part of a vast community while real life expectations and goals get in the way while the whole world seems to be collapsing into a bickering evil washed out mess is just so… demotivating.
Maybe all this is a sign change is coming. Maybe it’s just another dumb rant.
Either way, I wish I was traveling the world in a little Camper, drawing folk and going to furry conventions and acting hipster and cool and not stuck here, feeling lost as ever.
I haven’t made a journal in a month so I’ll give another rundown.
In a couple days all of the fall 2022 and spring 2023 graduates in college get to have graduation ceremony. I’ll be there and officially officially graduate then.
It feels good to be done but I’m in a position where I still don’t know what I want to do in life. I’ve wanted to be an artist, creating cool things and being able to work with amazing teams on projects larger than life itself. I think that dream has ended. Or rather, changed. As more artificial intelligence takes industry jobs and with the current geopolitical climate, I think getting a professional career in the arts is quite a dead end. I could still be a niche artist though, but there’s no money in that market. Eventually I’ll have to just settle for something local, which would probably be the smarter decision.
This all leads into something overarching I wanted to vent about. I feel very lost right now as a person, as a furry, and as a creator.
In my personal life I probably feel the most lost. I’m 21 yet I feel like I barely know what to do. My family wants me in all these different directions, from following my dreams to staying home and helping them out indefinitely. To be fair to the latter, my mother is nearing 60 and my grandmother 80. They need all the help they can and I’m glad to help them. Though family opinions clash and I feel in the middle. They all have different expectations for me. I’ve been so hesitant to follow any plan, so I’ve been sorta waiting until something comes. Probably leads to nowhere and nothing, as well as further feeling like I don’t do anything and that I’m supposed to be more grown up, but if I jump into something I have to make sure it works otherwise it will either be a waste of time or money, things that are kinda in short supply as of late.
I wish I could just go where I want to go in life while caring for family but I worry I cannot do both. I wish to leave my town and head somewhere else, but I know that it would be bad to leave family behind. I wish to get art job, but I know I won’t make enough to help them out. It’s a frustrating feeling in my life now, like I’m in limbo or something. It sucks.
Another place I feel lost in is in this fandom. I already knew a whole back I’m never gonna make any ripples in this vast fandom but now im not even sure whether I should toss a pebble into the vast ocean that is this fandom even. An ocean that is perpetually toxic in mindset and alienating in feeling. Yes, this fandom has helped me a lot over the years, more than any therapist at the very least. But at the same time it’s very difficult to say whether that same feeling is true as it was when I was younger. Maybe I’ve got wiser, or maybe I’ve been on furry Twitter too long, but all I’ve seen is people flipping out over the smallest details and turning on each other. “You have to agree with exactly my view or you aren’t my friend anymore” type of Pre-K bs mindset. Everyone throwing around extremely harmful labels like they are cuss words to hurt other folk. Plus the amount of transphobic and bigoted folk who get away with saying seriously screwed up things is appalling. It’s why I’ve barely posted art on Twitter and why this is my only place I post now. (There is the recent controversy with this site but I won’t get into that). With all I’ve seen on Twitter and Discord servers, loosing friends, seeing arguments unfold, etc. I think it’s best I stay in my little corner of the fandom, or at least build that little corner. Cause I don’t think I feel connected to the fandom at large anymore. I just feel so lost, feel like I’m doing something wrong or something that everyone will find a way to hate me for. I know it’s probably not so, but my stress level is definitely effecting how I see things. I don’t feel like fighting folk, I just want to vibe and post.
Lastly I wanna say I feel lost as a creator. I’ll admit, I enjoy making art, but I certainly don’t have the same drive I did when I was younger. It’s why I’d be terrible with commissions and also only do requests from servers and not here. I have a big worry I let everyone down by taking so long. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s that I just don’t have the urge, or that if I rush it will look bad. I don’t feel happy with rushing. Though sadly sometimes that’s the only way I’ll finish something. It’s an uphill battle, something I feel stressed with more and more. I constantly compare myself to my past. How I could sketch so much a day, how I could ANIMATE with just a laptop pen in the middle of high school study hall. Make a bunch of YouTube videos, feel like I’m making a positive impact, etc. While I can draw better now everything feels much slower and an effort now. Again I want to do it, but it just feels so much. I can barely edit videos now. Videos I wanted to work on I’ve been working on for YEARS and they’re still not out. Probably won’t anyway. And now with AI, various art websites and their restrictions and toxicity, social media being a corporate slog, art theft, and furries being furries, it gets so frustrating to post anything anymore. I just struggled to post on e6 cause I didn’t know what I was doing, only to watch in real time the image get deleted because “quality was poor”. It’s demotivating as shit. Posting and being part of a vast community while real life expectations and goals get in the way while the whole world seems to be collapsing into a bickering evil washed out mess is just so… demotivating.
Maybe all this is a sign change is coming. Maybe it’s just another dumb rant.
Either way, I wish I was traveling the world in a little Camper, drawing folk and going to furry conventions and acting hipster and cool and not stuck here, feeling lost as ever.
