I've been drawing since high school, but professionally I've began when I was 21, now I'm 30 and I've been doing this for almost a decade. Something that I wanted to do ever since I started was to make a living by doing art, not just by taking commissions or working in a studio on someone else's projects, but actually making my own projects, tell stories through drawings, comics, animations, almost any for of visual media. Of course through out these years, so ideas changed, some got scrapped, there has been some setbacks, but the core idea of basically making my own studio is still there. Have I got to where I wanted after all this time? Pretty much yeah to an extent.

On one hand, professionally things are looking up, I've learned so much and I still do, Drawings, Comics, Paintings, Pixel Art, Traditional 2D Animation and now with the commissions done I can hop back at learning 3D, on that regard I'm really happy at myself that I've managed to learn this much. I'm at a point that I really like my own art, despite still having room for improvement in some areas, I'm happy to experiment and trying new things to keep improving my art. All this dedication has also been paying off as a business, allowing me to make a minimum wage and even more at some point, allowing me to quit telemarketing, earning more than they were willing to pay, doing something that I love, for people that actually like the stuff I make.

Now on the other hand, financially I'm doing ok, but I think socially and mentally things have been spiralling ever since 2020. Losing long time person I thought they were my friend, the only friend and partner I had at some point went missing and specially a miserable experience trying to connect with artists that have been reaching out to me lately, I've been feeling pretty lonely and stuck with this mindset that everyone is lying, nobody actually likes me and anything that I do. Most artists so far that have been reaching out to me I really don't understand, they go through a bunch of hoops to reach out to add me on their Discord, but once they get me there, they either don't want to talk, share or do anything, then get mad at me once I confront them about it, or they come claiming to really like my stuff and wanting to do stuff with me, but everything has to be completely one sided, if I'm not on board for any reason then forget about anything they've said.

I've come to realise after a while that non-artist costumers are more reasonable and treat me more like another person than often other artists, the only problem I have is my difficulty to connect with because often they don't have much that actually interest me besides money, which I'm indifferent for it, and often conversations seems more like discussing stuff they want to buy next from me than actually sharing an interest. But I do appreciate that they try to talk, even if it doesn't work out, some people just don't have enough rizz to peak my interest, at least it's much better then having artists trying to reach out to be distand, acting like I'm not wanted around or they like my style, but not what I do and expect me to bed backwards and accept one sided deals.

Sometimes I feel like succeeding at doing art professionally was a mistake, or a monkey paw wish, where I did realised my dream to an extent, but I'm losing at connecting with others, specially other artists. I've also been a bit blindsided by not trying harder to connect with non-artists, with some of them been and still my best friends to this day. Or could also be that the nature of social media nowadays seems to have changed the way people try building connections, which I really don't think are real most of the time, it seems like people connect to each other only to boost their own numbers, it's all about networking, cold calculating PR move. Regardless, as long I'm still drawing, working on my own projects and some people are actually enjoying the stuff I put out, I can stop thinking about it for a while and get through it.

I still love doing art, I'm proud of what I can do and I like to keep learning to do more with it, despite feeling isolated, the financial pressures around in the field, A.I. getting better and becoming more prevalent around, as long as I'm still drawing and having fun, I'm not all that bothered by them.

I also want to thank everyone who after all this years, still supporting me despite my often constant moves to turn my business away from just selling commissions and just giving art to others to focus on doing my own stuff, for those that came just to see what I can do and want to keep me doing it, engaging with my art despite me not responding to comments most of the time, still support me despite some long periods with little or shit content, for those who bothered to ask me how am I doing before wanting to talk about business, y'all make all this job worth it and one of the reasons why I want to keep learning more stuff to do when comes to art.