lampfaced:

itsladykit:

4 reasons you shouldn’t just tear it all down

Sometimes, it’s very tempting to start tearing things down, to disconnect and disengage when you’re upset. Because you feel like you don’t belong somewhere or you feel like no one wants you or you feel like the things you make are pointless and stupid. It’s tempting. It is. I know.

Destruction is so much easier than creation. Even easier now—click a button and an account is gone, a file’s erased. Easy.

Here’s why you shouldn’t—

1. Someone, somewhere enjoys the things you made. Sometimes they feel like your works speak directly to them. They identify with the struggles and hardships of your characters. Or maybe they just enjoy the softness of the scene. The sweetness of it. Don’t take that away from them. Just because you can’t find value in it doesn’t mean someone else can’t. Let other people enjoy the things you’ve made.
2. It’s okay to be niche. Like the things you like. Even when it’s ‘weird’ or unusual. Other people occupy that same niche. Even if it’s not their usual thing, even if they only occasionally drop in to take a look around, that doesn’t mean they don’t like what they see.
3. It doesn’t matter if you’re off in the corner producing the kind of content only a few people enjoy, or if you’re in a creative slump and feel like you aren’t producing anything at all. That’s okay. You are not defined by the quality or quantity of the things you make. Don’t pressure yourself to do or be more than you’re comfortable with. There are no standards to meet, no bar to pass. You’ll get better with practice, but be nice to yourself in the meantime.
4. You have value as a person, beyond the things you make. You aren’t perfect, but no one expects you to be. There will be people that don’t like you, and there will be people you don’t like. But there will also be people you like and people who like you. Not just your content, but you as a person. You are wanted.

Destruction is easy. Disconnection is easy. Creation is hard. Connecting with other people is hard too. It’s not always fun. It’s not always a good experience. There will be pain. I won’t lie to you about that. But the good will outweigh the bad. Don’t deny yourself the opportunity to experience the good things because you’re afraid of the bad.

And remember, it’s okay to step back and retreat for a little while. It’s not all or nothing. You can put a hold on things. You can back away. And you can do that without destroying the things you’ve made and cutting off from the people you care about.

I’ve had so many artists I looked up to as a younger teen up and delete everything with no warning. I’d saved a lot of their art so that I could continue to enjoy it, and then my hard drive crashed and deleted everything, and left me with no way to recover any of it. Years of work, thousands of files no longer online, gone. Some of these people were enormous influences on my art and now they’re nowhere to be found online that I know of. But because I was extremely shy and never communicated with any of these people, or even actually hit the follow button on whatever site, they never knew. I can only imagine how many other people out there are like I was.

I try to leave up my old art now, even though I hate looking back at it most of the time. Early on, I followed in their footsteps of getting rid of everything by either completely deleting old “nasty” art, or literally throwing away physical pieces I’d never shown to anyone. If I could go back and throttle myself into keeping those things, I would. I might hate looking back at my old art, but I also like to see how far I’ve come when I’m having a slump and feeling like I’m not improving at all. Between the Great Hard Drive Crash and losing sketchbooks in various moves, I’ve lost so much of what I’ve done along the way.