A glimpse at the past, while imagining the future (Patreon)

Wow.

Just...wow.

I honestly didn't think I would be here, writing the first post to my own Patreon, but here I am. And it's all thanks to every single one of you, for whom I am eternally grateful.

I used to consider myself more to be a patron rather than the creator -- a "those who can't do, teach" kind of deal. While I was still working in tech, I figured that, since I didn't have the time or ability to create art myself, I might as well support those who did instead. I still do, of course, and still want to as much as I can, but things are slightly different now. For one, I'm now both a patron, and a creator.

Several years ago, there was a brief window in which I had the opportunity to sample this lifestyle. I produced and sold my art for the first time as greeting cards. I attended workshops and took classes to improve my skills as an artist. But then Work came calling and dragged me back into an office, so I shelved everything.

During those few months, I really struggled with my identity (still do, but that's a different story) as an artist or an engineer. Logically I knew it had to be feasible to reconcile the two, but it was just not sticking in my mind. It was in that period that I drew these two pictures, and wrote the respective blurbs to go with them.

I want to share these with you all because I think it shows an interesting contrast to where I am now, both in life and with my art. The mistakes and problems stick out and I want to redo them so badly, but for now, here they are as-is. You might also recognize that one of them is the picture I use for my profiles because I'm a sentimental sod like that. :)

Anyway, looooooong-winded and rambling way to say, here's a peek into my history as I take this leap of faith forward. 💖

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“What are you choosing to let kill you?”

For almost all my life, I was told that what I really loved doing was pointless, frivolous, useless.

So I began to hide myself. I became ashamed. If what I loved is so worthless, that must mean that I am worthless for loving it. To this day, I tend to hide all my art from those around me who are not artists. Even letting people know that I draw has been difficult, let alone showing my art to people.

Then I read this. And something clicked.

This is my only life, and I’ve spent almost all of it in hiding. I’ve been doing something else, something I don’t love, just because that was what I “should” be doing. I’ve been living someone else’s idea of life. Not mine.

The problem was that I was told that I should not do it.

But, just as mud starts off moldable in the rain and then hardens over time, the ‘should nots’ that began as flexible recommendations eventually hardened into immovable ‘could nots’.

I really believe(d) that I simply cannot make a career out of art. Only recently have I been able to start picking away at the solid mud bricks of the ‘could not’ to try and reach the ‘should not’, beneath which maybe I could find the ‘can do’, or even ‘must do’.

Unlike mud, it takes more than rain to turn those thoughts malleable again. Perhaps it’ll take a monsoon.

I’d already found what I love long ago, but I’ve been denying myself from it because I was ashamed and afraid. 

But I won’t let the shame and fear kill me any longer. Shame, guilt, fear -- those are not me.

This is me.

[May 2016]

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‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

An innocuous question to the adults who asked, but the start of a dream being killed for childhood-me. ‘Oh no, you shouldn’t do that, you’ll end up poor and homeless,’ was always the response to my simple, ‘I want to be an artist’.

Art was just a distraction from what was really important: getting good grades, attending a top university, and finally acquiring a respectable job. Art would only lead to squalor and suffering, I was told.

Over the years, the dream was stifled, pushed down, squashed under a pile of books used to prop up the laptop in an attempt to cool it while compiling code. Eventually it went the same way as the old birthday present that was just clutter, but guilt kept it from being thrown away.

I don’t hate what I do. In fact, it really would be a DreamJob™ if  could somehow attain that seemingly impossible meeting point of “What You Love”, “What Pays Well”, and “What You’re Good At”*. But it takes up a lot of time, even though it’s about only one-and-a-half-to-two of the three. While I put in more time to the work I do, I feel the time to do what I love slipping away.

Maybe someday I’ll find that mythical center of the Venn diagram.

* Jury is still out on whether I’m actually good at what I do right now.

[July 2016]