The Inner Struggle - Just Keep Going

I spend a good part of my days off, just wandering the internet. Finding fun informative videos, look at Deviant Art profiles, or learning a tutorial on something I've been wanting to learn for a while. What I am TRYING to do, is to channel that into that smaller percentage of time I spend actually making art.

Where the disconnect happens:

It's incredibly cool to see all the amazing works of art people make around the world. Ideas that were so obvious and in front of you and yet no one but this one person saw it and did it. Ideas that are so genius you can't help but continue searching their portfolio looking for more inspiration. Ideas so genuine, fun or advanced, that you want to be that artist.

Frustration settles in. Envy takes over. Disparity cuts you down. I find myself comparing myself to other artists.



Any professor, parent or experienced [insert job title you want] will tell you to never do that. You cannot compare yourself to someone else because you cannot compare what you both have gone through and value of those experiences.

One artist may have practiced and failed their whole life and finally created a master piece they decided to share online. Feeding off the constructive advice and admiration, they continued to make more and more thus filling their portfolio with jaw dropping artwork. What we don't see is the pages and pages of bad drawings they made, or the first set of paintings that were deleted out of shame when they received no views.


It's during this discouraging stage I decide NOT to start the next piece I was planning and that is where my disconnect is. I feel inferior to this amazing artists that are leaps and bounds ahead of me, and yet I forget - I have so much more time to grow. I have so much more to learn. I haven't failed enough. The only real failure has been a failure to start. That is the biggest mistake I have ever made. I waste my time telling myself maybe I should try doing something else instead of actually TRYING to see if I can do THIS!

Don't compare yourself to others because you don't know what stage in life they are in. Everyone has their valleys and their mountain tops. The hardest people to try not to compare yourself with is the artist younger than you, who are so naturally gifted. But just cause they are naturally gifted doesn't mean they don't have their own struggles (e.g. managing money, family issues, handling stress, organization, communication). 
Don't give up in trying cause someone is better. At some point in time EVERYONE was bad at what they did.



Just keep going. Just keep going.



It reminds me of the weekend I went hiking in Catalina with my buddies. We were exhausted climbing this mountain. The path KEPT turning over and over again. Every time it LOOKED like we were there, there was another hill or curve or barrier in our way. We stopped a few times and rested; we even debated on going back. But one thing we kept saying was "We would kick ourselves if we turned back now only to find out later that we were almost to the top" And at our last stop as we debated one more time, I looked up the path and saw stair steps. It was the end of the path. We made it to the platform at the top. 

You started on a path. Don't go back. You will kick yourself for the rest of your life for not pushing a little bit further. 

Just keep going. Just keep going.