Decided to quit being hard on myself and stand the f**k up

Hello hi!

I've been a stranger to myself the past few...months. I've been meaning to give a detailed update about my life and its lifeness for quite some time now and right now was one of those moments where i was again, just thinking about it. So I took matters in my own hands (where,to my surprise, they've always been) and decided to jump right into it.

The fear of perfecting things has kept me from exploring my potential and just doing things in general. Its been so exhausting. Being a stranger to myself has weirdly helped me see things about me that i have been choosing not to see. Some of these things have resulted in my inability to express myself creatively. The fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of shame have all done nothing less than waste a lot of my time.

I've been feeling like I'm stuck in a roadblock but i'm the only car on the road. I could simply keep moving on but i'm choosing to stay static and not move. Some days it feels like maybe I'm not moving because i'm low on fuel but even when i know i'm surrounded by gas stations/petrol pumps- I wont go to them. Maybe because I'm ashamed I kept running my car without covering any distance and ran out of fuel. I hope this analogy makes sense to you.

I've been conflicted about my identity online for almost a year now. I dont know what exactly my brand is and when i see how other people have it figured out even in the slightest it makes me want to restart everything. And often I think about to how many people out there I might be the "other people" they compare themselves to.
 For the past few months I've been extra careful and quiet with my online presence and comics. I wondered why I'm suddenly making silent comics- its not something i consciously started making. It just happened. I feel like words are too strong and can be taken out of context and interpreted wrongly but then so is silence. Maybe words would hold be accountable if I sound stupid through them but with silent comics- it's upto the reader how to interpret it and they'd feel stupid for not understanding it. Which was such a shitty way to approach comics. I've been scared of feeling stupid again because of past experiences. I became too contradictory- it became a bit difficult to recognize myself and live with myself. I felt like everyone was lying to me and because of that I felt like i was lying to everyone by hiding this internal conflict. I do enjoy making silent comics though, it's comforting but I don't wanna get too comfortable either hehe.

When I started out making comics in 2016- I didn't know what direction i was chasing. I had no direction to go into. But I knew why i was making comics- because I felt good making them and the bouncing of reactions from one reader to another was exciting to see. The excitement of sharing work with my online audience was my driving force. I was then making things for myself AND for my audience. Then somewhere in 2017-18 I caught myself making things for my audience first and grew distant from myself. Making comics felt like a task. I remember getting a message around that time from a person (who wasn't even following me), to paraphrase it - "Your comics suck. They dont have a head or a tail. You dont deserve so many people following you" And although i  pretended to not care about it too much because by that time i had received enough messages from all sorts of people but deep down it struck a chord. I was internally already feeling directionless with my work and now it was kind of validated by a stranger on the internet. Its so easy for me to keep the negative messages in an easily accessible brain file that i forget about the positive messages  i've received and still do. 

Now, I wouldn't call that message fully negative as it made me want to better my work. It was simply a harsh critic but i feel like there could have been a different approach to the change i made to my work where i didnt beat myself up and hated everything i made from that point onwards out of fear of another stranger pointed out maybe my comics dont have a neck or an ankle. Looking back, I've wasted a lot of time thinking about people's opinion and seeking approval while not respecting my own opinion and approval.

 Then, mid 2018- almost late 2019, felt like the most comfortable phase of putting my work out and my online presence in general. I was creating lots and developed an urge to expand my interest to different mediums like songs, zines, animation etc. I was confident with my work and embraced the fact that i dont have to be perfect when just starting out. I would get an idea and work on it quickly, although with some ideas i feel like i should have sat on them before executing them haha. I wouldnt think too much about what people would think of my work and would make things for myself first and put it out. I've always tried to be open about mental health issues on instagram and I like it that way. I like that I have people relating to my work and not feeling alone. I make comforting comics to fill the lack of solidarity (even when theres loads of it everywhere) in my life in those moments and i like that it ends up fixing the lack of it in someone who reads the comic even if its for a moment or two. Its really cool.

I scrolled down my instagram recently and cringed SO hard. I wanted to delete all my posts up until 2018 where I sort of started developing my comic format and character to help stay remembered lol I dont remember being the person I was when I started making comics in 2016 or the one who made comics in 2017 and the one in early 2018. I remember the person who made comics from mid 2018 to maybe late 2019 (sorry for so many timeline mentions oops) I remember the person I have been every since I cut my own bangs which was in mid 2018 haha wow. I didnt delete the posts because if it weren't for the older drawing i wouldn't have reached where i am right now even when I'm conflicted- i have a sense of direction i want to take my work into. So, the cringe is staying on. Everytime an Instagram memory pops up from a year ago - its hard for me to believe i was so proactive. But I did what felt right then, to do what feels right now. Thats how things work :D

I've spent way too much time for the last many months thinking about what people i know in real life think of my work. Kept thinking about whether some of them are only friends with me because of numbers and also kept thinking they're lying about liking my work. I thought a lot a lot and a lot and exhausted my brain. People dont think about me as much as i think they think about me. Everyone's probably thinking about themselves too or maybe other things they have going on in life.

 I have also wasted time on assuming everyone is like me. Thats one of the biggest mistakes i've almost made. It was difficult to realize different people are different people with different lives. That was very silly of me but at least I know now. I may not be as important as i think i am in other people's lives or as important as i want to be in other people's lives BUT whats of utmost importance is how important i am in my own life. I'm rediscovering my importance in my own life. Life is funny and special. Being a human is so stupid and confusing but also weirdly gratifying.

Because i've been crazily hard on myself by letting my fears of embarrassment, failure and shame hold me back, i've forgotten who i really am. I feel fooled by myself and I cant remember myself from now. But i know i am accessible to myself, i just had to quit being an overthinker at least in this side of my life.  Writing this finally, is a small step over winning myself back from myself.  Maybe I'll go back to using dialogues in my comics, hopefully i'll find the right words along the way. 

Some days I've felt words could articulate my emotions easier than comics or art then when i got to writing things down to be put out on the internet- it felt like i was cheating on my art. I was bummed i couldnt find the right drawings for the right words and this ended up with me bottling a lot of shit up until it burst in slow motion and started a slow destruction.  I felt like i was a bad artist for not being able to draw out my emotions. But now i know not every feeling can be translated into drawings just like how not every feeling can be translated into words.

I've also noticed that being myself online was so much easier when i didnt have a lot of friends in real life and now that i have so many people who i can call friends- i'd subconsciously put this burden of not letting any of them down by being strange online which inadvertently put my need to be "perfect" in the way of creating and sharing things. Although it pushed me to get better at some things, it also made me filter out a huge chunk of myself online, i started holding myself back from even interacting with my sweet instagram audience and i may have lost some of the connection i previously had. It was all very stupid of me but i am so glad i could take a step back and analyze the situation before it got out of hand ( i dont know what that would mean in this context, i dont want to think about it either lol) Also if any friend does think i'm strange online and wants to end it all, i think i'm better off without them anyway. I am not thinking of any friend in particular but now im suddenly thinking of all my friends oops BUT i've got the best of friends and this really says nothing about them- its was just me building up assumptions and jumping to conclusions in my head.

Another thing I've been worried about is not being able to make enough to support my love for making comix and other things and then having to do something else to make a living. BUT i'm gonna stand up for myself and ask for help and support because i need it like everyone on this blue dot. I'll talk about having a Patreon and I will open up commissions and I will interact with my audience because THATS what I would do. Thats who I am and thats what i want to do...again.

I've had Patreon for 3+ years now and I've only ever promoted it so much. I was thinking about this the other day and could trace back why I've been so hesitant and embarrassed about promoting it. When I first launched my Patreon I got some hate from some trolls who said I didn't deserve the support I was getting because my art wasn't good enough and a part of me has been dragging around those comments for such a long time and that's what kept me from getting new people because I was scared I'd get similar comments again but I've come to realize or rather implement, because I've always known this fact but could never apply it- not everybody is going to like my work and I cannot expect everyone to like it. I don't like everything that I see so why should I put such heavy expectations on people. People/followers will come and go but there's always going to be people who will love and appreciate what I do and will give me space to explore and grow. And that's a comforting thought to have. I know making things about people might get bad but when you're on social media it is about people in a way but it's also important to do things for yourself first and to remember why you do what you do.

My Instagram gained "popularity" when I was making stuff I don't enjoy making anymore and I'm surprised so many people have still stuck by even after I stopped making stuff like that. I'm grateful for the platform that I have , it is my platform and it is okay to talk about my things on my platform. Remember that, stupid brain.

ANYWAY, this has been sufficiently long, i feel. Thank you for reading so far. I just wanted to let it all out. I think i've let out about 80% of what ive been feeling. The other 20% might need a trigger warning and i'm not comfortable talking about it just yet but i want to eventually talk about it hence i'm typing it here to hold myself accountable.
I am not ashamed of being myself online. I am not afraid of being myself online. And i will NOT die poor.

This seemed like a very unnecessary update earlier and i could have just not said anything and started doing the things i've mentioned i'd do but that wouldn't have felt right. I'm being true to myself and with you and i aim to be able to be this confident with sharing things with thousands of people again. I will not fear some internet person commenting or messaging me "you are not special" when i talk about my mental health. 
Its taken me a global pandemic to realize a lot of things about myself but i think its the case for most of us. 

Thank you for your support. I know i say this a lot but it truly DOES mean a lot to me. Thank you. <3 :')

TL;DR- Realized I've wasted a lot of time seeking other's approval and worrying about their opinion of my work which made me hate everything i made and led me to share less work online. So, decided to put sort of an end to it and move the fuck on and go back to myself. Thank you. <3