26th November 2021
It wasn’t worth the hassle of juggling between two ideas because it ended up not only confusing me, but also distracting me from what I actually wanted to get out of this year, which was to come up with something new for once.
The illustration idea seemed too easy for me since it was way in my comfort zone and there was literally no room to grow at all, because with that idea, all I would have done was to create illustrations, make prints out of them (because capitalism) and that would be it. Surely, I would have had fun doing that, and it’s what I’ve wanted to do as well as being good at it, but it doesn’t excite me at all, not to mention how saturated the market is, so there’s literally no point in doing it if I’m just going to be a slightly fancier cog in the machine that can draw well, plus I hate Instagram with a burning passion and there seems to be no other feasible mainstream alternative where most illustrators hangout (in a place where normal people also hang out), also because I don’t want to monetise my hobbies/art because it sucks all the fun out of it, even though it seems to be all the rage at the moment, I simply don’t buy into it at all.
At least with my original idea, there’s room to grow, it’s exciting, it’s constantly evolving and the possibilities are virtually endless, so there’s that, also because it’s got room for me to grow into, and whilst I’m currently frustrated and overwhelmed by how big it is, I’ll hopefully get used to it, plus it ties into my personal and research interests.
I feel like I just keep raving on and on about the same things all the time, it’s getting boring, but I feel that the illustration idea was just me panicking and running back to my comfort zone because it was what I knew, but where’s the fun in that if you can’t grow and do things? I also find fiction to be absolutely pointless (I’m currently reading 1984 and holy hell, it’s depressing) because there’s nothing you can do with it afterwards, you’ve just gotten yourself emotionally invested into some character’s lives and that’s it, which is ironic since I used to enjoy reading fiction when I was younger. Maybe I’ve just grown out of it, and the same can be said for illustration in general as well since it doesn’t excite me anymore the way it used to a few years ago.
I try to get back into it, but I’m reminded of a version of myself that no longer exists. A version of myself that exists solely in The Before Times, which are now gone, because I now have to move on and do something else for once, and working at the intersection of art and technology seems a lot more interesting than illustration ever did (not to mention that illustration is so damn competitive, so good luck to ever getting known in that world unless you network like there’s no tomorrow, but that will just eat up your time in creating stuff).
Maybe I’m being too cynical about this, but maybe I’m not. I have to accept that it’s okay to grow out of things that you thought you’d never grow out of, things that you swear you’d be doing forever, and I have to accept that it’s okay to be interested in things that you’d literally never think of doing before. I think the pandemic has something to do with this, because ever since it started, it feels like my personality’s just gone and done a full 180, which is probably just a shift from adolescence into adulthood. The old me doesn’t exist anymore. She’s gone. I’m now more left-brained and analytical than I ever was. I need something new to do, and I’m over doing things that I already know how to do, because there’s no fun in that. I need a challenge, and I think my original idea is just that, because the last thing the world needs is another person that knows how to draw pretty pictures. I’m over it.
This whole thing feels like breaking up with someone whilst also dealing with the loss of someone, because that’s what it feels like, and that’s what it is. Comfort zones are overrated anyway, and I don’t get how people are just okay with staying in them forever without getting bored because I get bored very easily, and the future is in the hands of those that innovate as well as keeping up with the times in a non-destructive way (i.e. by not chasing trends). Maybe it’s also got something to do with my Strengthsfinder strengths (Deliberative, Ideation, Adaptability, Learner, and Intellection) as well as my Myers-Brigg type (which is a strong INTP), so I guess there’s that.
Hopefully I actually stick to my original idea now instead of getting sidetracked all the time and doing other things that have no correlation to what my main goal is, because all that’s going to do is just hold me back, and having two business ideas at the same time has only caused me needless confusion, which shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and it was just a spanner thrown into the works, a roadblock, if you will.