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Oh hey, I did promise I'd say why I'm back, didn't I?
16 years ago
OK, here's the story.
For anyone who missed it, back on October 31 my computer stopped working, the cause quickly narrowed down to a hard drive malfunction, if not outright failure. This, it seemed, would mean I had lost all my files, including all the full-res, multi-layer originals of the stuff I post on here. I use those to get the colors right whenever I "ink up" a new drawing, so I'd have to guess from that point on. But more importantly (caution: pretentiousness ahead), and probably only people who have been through this sort of thing can really understand this, having one's life's work suddenly go up in flames like that has a way of sapping one's will to go on creating.
There was another thing, though. Looking at the projected expense of getting it all back (upwards of $600, with no guarantee it would even work) made me question why I cared. Why I would bother even trying to get it back. And why, honestly, I had even put so much time and effort into creating it in the first place. I started questioning the whole furry scene, and realized that, at best, we're a bunch of cartoonists making standalone drawings of perfectly ordinary stuff that somehow magically becomes interesting to us just because we put a dog face and tail on the characters. And what was worse, I had become One Of Those Furries. The ones who were well out of school but still live with their parents, have no job, and spend all their time surfing furry websites and playing video games. The ones I had always privately laughed at but also felt sorry for, because I figured there must have been something wrong with their brains to make them not capable of putting it away long enough to look for work. All I needed was a hoard of commissioned art on my walls and the transformation would be complete.
I knew This Shit Needed To Stop. And lo and behold, this was the perfect excuse.
Of course, I hadn't anticipated both my problems being fixed in such a hurry.
Two things happened not long after that. One, I figured out that my hard drive wasn't really dead after all. It had an overheating problem, which meant that once it was let to cool off, it would still run for an hour or so before conking out. Long enough to get all my stuff safely tranferred to its replacement. The second thing is that I found work. By which I mean the Web developers I had been working part-time for back in 2008 got over the slump they'd been in and have enough work for me again. It's still part-time, but it's more or less steady work for steady pay, and I suspect I'll have worked my way up to a full time position pretty soon. Plus, I actually like the work. I'd even go so far as to call it "fun."
Things are looking up.
For anyone who missed it, back on October 31 my computer stopped working, the cause quickly narrowed down to a hard drive malfunction, if not outright failure. This, it seemed, would mean I had lost all my files, including all the full-res, multi-layer originals of the stuff I post on here. I use those to get the colors right whenever I "ink up" a new drawing, so I'd have to guess from that point on. But more importantly (caution: pretentiousness ahead), and probably only people who have been through this sort of thing can really understand this, having one's life's work suddenly go up in flames like that has a way of sapping one's will to go on creating.
There was another thing, though. Looking at the projected expense of getting it all back (upwards of $600, with no guarantee it would even work) made me question why I cared. Why I would bother even trying to get it back. And why, honestly, I had even put so much time and effort into creating it in the first place. I started questioning the whole furry scene, and realized that, at best, we're a bunch of cartoonists making standalone drawings of perfectly ordinary stuff that somehow magically becomes interesting to us just because we put a dog face and tail on the characters. And what was worse, I had become One Of Those Furries. The ones who were well out of school but still live with their parents, have no job, and spend all their time surfing furry websites and playing video games. The ones I had always privately laughed at but also felt sorry for, because I figured there must have been something wrong with their brains to make them not capable of putting it away long enough to look for work. All I needed was a hoard of commissioned art on my walls and the transformation would be complete.
I knew This Shit Needed To Stop. And lo and behold, this was the perfect excuse.
Of course, I hadn't anticipated both my problems being fixed in such a hurry.
Two things happened not long after that. One, I figured out that my hard drive wasn't really dead after all. It had an overheating problem, which meant that once it was let to cool off, it would still run for an hour or so before conking out. Long enough to get all my stuff safely tranferred to its replacement. The second thing is that I found work. By which I mean the Web developers I had been working part-time for back in 2008 got over the slump they'd been in and have enough work for me again. It's still part-time, but it's more or less steady work for steady pay, and I suspect I'll have worked my way up to a full time position pretty soon. Plus, I actually like the work. I'd even go so far as to call it "fun."
Things are looking up.
I don't get the idea behind looking for some kind of justification for liking Furry things, though. I mean, if you take the "drawings of perfectly ordinary stuff that somehow magically becomes interesting to us just because we put a dog face and tail on the characters" line of thinking to its logical conclusion, then art has never been worthwhile. In the end, it's all just pigment on a piece of paper (or colored dots on an electric rectangle) arranged in patterns we find interesting for some reason. It's not like it holds any intrinsic value outside of our own interpretations.
Don't worry, be happy. It's all just for fun. :)
I think there's a middle way between giving up the fun and becoming "one of those..."
It may mean producing pictures less often, being less involved. Which is probably okay. Let another generation of cubs enjoy this thing in the way only people still in school with lots of free time to experiment can do.
It may also mean having your art grow up with you - exploring new themes appropriate to a more adult life. There are lots of over-30 artists on FA who have regular jobs and lives, but still have fun. Nothing wrong with that.