Maybe you need someone to talk about it with?

I have been, but it's still not easy, and there are restrictions to what just talking will do. I want to embrace things more openly and so I am making efforts to engage with a larger community.

I've never ended up in a creative block over it (my inspiration just comes and goes generally,) but I have spent a lot of time over the last, gosh, twenty years wrestling with the questions of whether my interests define me and in what ways/to what extent, and I definitely feel you on having almost all my primary creative outlets tie in so closely with these interests that I'm still leery of expressing outside of this online anonymity. Without digging into private, personal details, what I'd offer from my experience is that A. there's no deadline to figuring this stuff (personal issues and how/if you want to incorporate them in your art) out, so it's okay to take time and approach it in a way that's comfortable for you, and B. your creative outlets are there for you, so you shouldn't feel like you "can't" express other aspects of yourself through them - but at the same time C. who you want to be as an artist is for you to decide, and it doesn't have to be an exhaustive reflection of your entire inner life if you don't want to.

Yes. In certain ways. It took time, thinking on the people I interacted with, and the slow finding of a group of friends where the lines openness and honesty have been established to bring things back.

Hang in there. I wish I could help...

Having been depressed for the better part of this week in the face of what I want to make, versus what I'm feeling capable of, it seems like a similar problem. Part of what makes art difficult is facing oneself. Sometimes it's really painful, if not scary, or both.

this reminded me of this quote, i hope that it proves inspiring to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91FQKciKfHI

I appreciate that. I remember this video, and it's bolstering for many, I'm sure. But, my problems come from elsewhere and I'm doing the work to get through it. In the figure those words will do the work that they're meant to.

Nah my closest in art is a direct responce to addresing huge massive personal pain.. https://www.furaffinity.net/view/4524224/ after i dumped that outi was able to say goodby to my berniese mountain dog.

Try an alt account as a sort of "alter-ego", may or may not work but perhaps worth a try as you could say it's not you and not your brand at that point.

Ive been using my comic for years to address events that happened to me personally to gain closure or to explore my feeling over how things happened. I thought I was over the trauma of certain events that happened to me almost 20 years ago but oddly when I wrote that all into my comic and drew it out it was kinda difficult for me but then once my character was in a safe place away from the bad situation I just broke and hit the blackest of art blocks in my life. I didnt touch my comic for three months (which considering at the time I was outputting once to twice a week) caused quite a few readers to worry. It did force me to reassess a lot of what was going on in my life and whether I was okay.

I think as and artist when youre connected to your character on a deeply personaly level you kinda want to be protective of them but also it is a useful way to delve into yourself and get to understand yourself a bit better as a bystander watching your character go through things or explore stuff in a way that you cant necessarily do so in real life

Yes.

There's things I think about and I would like to draw, that I've avoided. I'm not entirely sure why, a certain sense of self or dignity? I don't want to betray my interests to random strangers although it's pretty obvious to anyone that's known me for a while. Family, yes, does not get to see this side. After many years of being asked when I was going to stop wasting time on cartoon animals, I stopped sharing with them.

I'm only supposed to make still life or portraits or landscapes, in their opinion, and somehow anything 'weird' was a criticism of them too.

I don't have a lot of experience at this sort of stuff, but I do have to ask, is it a problem that you can't share this stuff with everyone? Not being comfortable sharing part of your personal interests with different parts of your life is perfectly normal, there are many things I only share with a handful of people - some things I share with one person - and a lot of things I'm completely open with everyone with.

Sometimes you just want certain groups of people to view you a certain way, I think this is perfectly normal, it's not lying to anyone. Your perception of how people see you is very important, and it's up to you to decide if you want to change that.

You could look at it as brand, but to me it's control over that first impression. It's like having a work personality and a home personality. They're both you, they're just both you for different reasons.

Compartmentalizing your interests is completely natural, and when you're comfortable sharing your personal stuff with people I feel like you'll know when and who to do that with.

On the internet there's a lot less risk, which makes it a lot easier. I think a big hurdle I got over eventually was realizing the internet and reality aren't much different in that regard. Most people care as much about these minor details that make up who you are as you care about all of their minor details.

I can't recall the last ultra embarrassing moment or event that another person did in real life, but I can tell you about every single one that's happened to me. Close friends care about you for more than that stuff too so it shouldn't be how they ultimately judge you.

I don't know if any of that is helpful at all, rather stream of consciousness :V

It's less to do with my ability to share it and more being preoccupied with personal concerns that keep bleeding into my work. Every time I sit down to draw I keep wanting to address my feelings on paper, whether I share it with anyone or not, but it makes me too anxious and I quickly shut down. Suddenly I'll feel exhausted and it will be hard to keep my eyes open. It might be more accurate to say that recently my work has become less of a distraction from personal anxieties and more of an outlet and extension of those thoughts, and that's making it hard to work.

Since our art is an extension of ourselves, shouldn't you be embracing using it as a way to explore the personal?

Sometimes an artist is afraid to put out there content for fear of being judged on what it is and not whim is drawing it. Will people like it? Will they think it is weird? Will I be mocked or in our current social groups be "cancelled" because what you say or post is no longer socially acceptable as decided by herd mentality afraid to stand out and be different?

Sometimes you just gotta draw it and let it be free. It might encourage others to join you as you learn you are not alone.

Our entire fandom exists because a few people took the risk to be different.

I'm arriving at this discussion dreadfully late but I can relate to the personal turmoil.

Despite being just an art alias with low engagement, I often find that I'm deliberately curating every aspect of myself to better accommodate some nebulous vision of a "brand".

This brand narrows down both my personality and the art I want to create.

This is to no fault of mutuals and my audience, but ive put a lot barriers in place to ensure im always humoring them first and not myself.

A lot of my audience likes female tf, so I draw mainly female tf, despite having a large desire to explore elements of male centric tf and TFTG.

A lot of my audience prefers voyeuristic depictions of tf (i.e the pleasures of seeing TF but not necessarily experiencing it), so I draw that frequently. Meanwhile i'm just brimming with desire to explore TF with myself as a subject, while engaging with other creators who love to do the same.

The worst part of all, this is all in my head. I dont know for a fact if my friends and followers will be put off by more personally-driven content. Ive just arbitrarily decided I can only create to a point, and keep the other stuff bottled up. This makes me disdainful at times.

I cant tell you how to break out of this rut, only that you're not alone in feeling this creative barrier.

Wishing you well Comic.