<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>

I think this is the first one of these I ever made, actually. Original sketch was from November 2020.

I thought of just leaving these as cleaned up linework but I did want them to have a bit of basic colour in the end. I know they don't stand out greatly but they are essentially quick motivational doodles and they will be unusual in that I will go into some part of life with each one.

---

Quite often, I have found myself caring too deeply about someone else's issues and neglecting my own issues as a result, or sometimes finding that I've become quite invested in someone's problems when I could be taking part of that same time to better myself too.

Helping others feels important to me but it has been at the front a few too many times and it's only been in recent years that I started learning to put myself first but even then it's taken a lot of pushing from people close to me who want to help me too.

Almost two years ago now, I think, I had a very unpleasant situation develop with someone I knew or who I thought I knew, and essentially, years of being invested in that friendship - one of very few I've had in recent years - simply evaporated; one day, because of a chain of events that lead to some incident, all of that time I'd invested trying to be nice, helpful, friendly and so on... That time simply felt pointlessly spent, because what happened, I couldn't have prevented, no matter how nice I'd tried being, as it had been simmering away underneath before I even knew of it. Before I'd even met the other person.

The worst of it? I probably felt worse about it than the other person. For over a year I became deeply mistrusting like I've never been before. To this day I am afraid of this happening again but the advice I received that has probably helped most is that I shouldn't allow a single person to change such a large part of my personality for the worse and all the while, consider that maybe I could manage better how I become invested in someone whilst still being interested in their personal life and being friendly to them.

Now, I just need to continuously find the courage or strength to be as I was before this had happened. I need others to find this same courage in their own lives so that we can live in a world that is a bit better, despite the flaws of those who undermine that. Just like in traffic, sometimes we have to stop and assess danger and priorities.

Posted using PostyBirb