Being an artist is hard af

Hey, this is my first time writing a blog post, so whatever. I’m doing this 90% because I need to get these thoughts down.

If you're reading this now, you’re probably an artist of some kind—maybe an illustrator, animator, photographer, musician, etc. You know it’s hard, I mean, being successful doing what you love.

When I was about 13 years old (in 2018), I wanted to be a professional illustrator, and like everyone else with that goal, I created an Instagram account to share my work with the world. Sure, I wasn’t the best, but my drawings weren’t that bad. You can guess that I got almost no likes, followers, or the things you expect to get from social media, but I wasn’t mad. I thought, “Well, it may be like this for a long time; it’ll get better eventually.” But as the months passed and nothing changed, I felt like my work was improving, but it wasn’t reflected in the numbers. I kept thinking, “Oh, I’m not good enough.” But then I started noticing that other people with less time and the same quality were doing way better than me. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “What the hell am I doing wrong? What’s the secret? Is my work just bad?” I figured out that I wasn’t posting as often as them, I wasn’t following the trends, I didn’t have popular friends, and so on. I said, “Well, I’m gonna try to be like them,” but holy shit, that was not what I wanted to do. It felt so inauthentic and weird, so I just stopped doing art for social media with the intention of becoming an illustrator. If I needed to do those things to succeed, then it wasn’t for me.

In 2020, I started making music, and I found it really fun, even more than drawing. Back then, the only people who regularly listened to my music were my friends, and they thought it was pretty cool. It was like when I first started drawing—just enjoying it without worrying about anything. Now, it’s 2024, I’m 18 years old, starting music school at a local university, and trying my best to make it in the industry. But it’s just like when I was trying to be an illustrator, especially with TikTok and these shitty “social” media apps that encourage you to be as fake as possible, and I’m fucking falling into it.

I guess that’s how things work. I guess that’s the only option.