The Meanderings of Fingers

Safe place to vent and cry, I’m going to pretend that’s what this is… it might be a Tl;Dr, so feel free to skip it right on by.

I’m cycling around towards the precipice again.  Discouragement and disappointment are eating through my determination like tears made from acid rain - sky knows I’ve been crying enough of them again.

It’s probably just excuses for myself again.  I must not want it enough, that’s all it can really be, right?  If I wanted this to work, I would feel driven and motivated to work every moment I’m not actually working at the hospital.  

But I don’t.

I still fight with myself to work and to push to drag more out of myself onto the paper.  To pick up the color and to study.  But it’s past time for that, isn’t it?  I didn’t soak it up when I should have.

I have become so preoccupied with life - with drowning in debt, with barely seeing my significant other, with the fact that life happens and over and over I am pushing back not only getting a place together but our wedding.  How do I keep up and try to make those strides to improve my art and myself into something people want and care about?  I can’t shut it off, none of it is going to go away.  None of it is going to change.

I fucked up.  I should never have thought I could make my way with my art being anything but a hobby.  I would be a lot better off, wouldn’t I?  Even if I loved being immersed in the culture of art, if I will forever be attracted and want to live in it - I can’t do it, can I?

If I can’t support myself in the things I supposedly love, it can never work.  All I see when I look at the images is a single thought: Not good enough.  The art isn’t good enough and so I am not good enough.  I am not worthy of anyone’s notice and I am lucky to have a fiancee who does.

I feel like it’s time to face reality.

It’s time to deactivate the accounts - DeviantArt, Tumblr, Gaia, Photobucket and all the rest.  Wipe it all away and keep it to myself in my books or in my head.  

Time to buckle down and be an adult.  Go back to school, get a job that I can pay my bills and make a living with.  A job I can stop being a burden on my family with and get on my own feet, pay my bills, be married.  Maybe then, someday, art might have room to be an integral part of my life again instead of being trod upon and put on the back burner.  Every time I put a piece up, things I put my heart and soul into, and can’t even get a cursory comment…

It’s selfish and vain to need the validation of others’ approval, but I need it anyway!  And I can’t attain it, I’m just not good enough.

I wish it could be me saying that this is all brought on by life going to hell in a hand basket - my panic with my upcoming surgery, Jace’s injury, financial struggles, car problems etc all at once. But it’s not the first time this has crossed my mind.  Every time I post something and hold my breath until I can’t hold it anymore it comes.  If I can’t support myself, how can others support me?

They can’t.  I can’t.  I don’t know what to do anymore.