If I Can Be Completely Honest

I'd recently done a re-draw of an old drawing I did back in 2013 with my old Wacom tablet (that was about $200 at the time) with my new display drawing tablet (XP Pen Artist's Series 13.3 Pro) and I could definitely see the difference. Similarly, I stumbled across this Blogger which we were required to start back in college as well as my old DeviantArt page.

Looking at my oldest posts in hindsight, I definitely didn't have my priorities ON animation. I thought I did, but I don't really think I did. There were other things distracting me and I wish I had taken it more seriously when I was in school. I did have a lot of fun and met some amazing people, artists, and did learn a bit here and there.. but definitely not as much as I could have. 

After moving out to California on my own, I realized that animation wasn't my passion like I thought it was. Whenever I tried to either do freelance work or keep up with it, I didn't have the most updated software and I was told I couldn't do future projects because of it. I also had to work as much as I could to keep up with rent and bills. I eventually had to get 2 jobs and, up until the pandemic, I was leaving the apartment at 6:30am and sometimes getting home after 9pm when I took extra hours.

I stopped drawing for a good year or more. It wasn't until I met a fellow Barnes coworker who drew the same style I did was when I started to draw again. 

I'm happy to have learned all that I did back in college. If I could re-do the classes again, I would (more seriously this time and less distracted). I'm still paying off my loans today and I don't want to go back to school if I still have that debt. It's still a struggle sometimes to produce new artwork, I acknowledge I'm guilty of the sin of sloth. I've also gone through bouts of anxiety which, I hope, I've been able to manage better as of late. I have a supportive and patient boyfriend (long distance) as well as great friends for motivation during the ups and downs. Many of those friends have ups and downs of their own and I can only hope that experience with my own issues can help them get through theirs. It's an ongoing journey and I hope to learn much much more for a long long time.