laugh yourself to death

"Do not kill the part of you that is cringe. Kill the part of you that cringes"

I did it! I feel like throwing myself a party anytime I "accomplish" any little thing. Probably because nobody knows the mental gymnastics I subject myself to whenever I set off to do any task, big or small. It all feels big to me. I put "accomplish" in quotes because I firmly believe progress is an illusion I think the root cause of my hesitance to dive into my unapologetic artist era headfirst is my attention to reception.

It sounds so cliche but I'm genuinely so afraid to make mistakes. I constantly feel like there is an audience I'm performing for. I cannot deny this concept as holding some truth, seeing as how I want to share my visual creations and daily reflections with the world and the only way to do that effectively these days seems to be through the internet. Every artist who exists on the digital plane opens themselves up to potential public scrutiny, or even worse: indifference. (aka flopping lol)

Every day I consume new information that changes my life and in a way, life feels like a never-ending research paper. A few weeks ago, I heard something that helped me deal with my fear of being perceived. A girl on TikTok said she noticed how her internal feelings about her art would change depending on how the general public reacted to it. If she put something out that she wasn't blown away by, but others began to praise it– she'd start to like it more. On the contrary, if she put something out that she was very proud of, but others showed little attention to it– she'd begin to think it wasn't very impressive. After some self reflection, she became aware of how silly this process was. She began to add another step to her artistic process. In between creating something and releasing it to the world, she now makes a conscious, intentional decision of how she feels about her piece. Sometimes she even writes it down. And then she puts it out. That way, no matter what other people think of it, she will always know what she (truly) thinks of it.

I think I'm going to start implementing this step in my art-sharing process as well because the thought of someone else impacting the way I feel about my own creation seems so weak to me.

Anyways, I could go on forever about the intricacies of being an artist, and sharing your art online, and dealing with public perception, and navigating this weird thing called "the internet" but on the other side of the coin, there is a truth so obvious that it's painful.

There is no audience. There's just you.

So create,

Create freely

Create passionately

Create like nobody's watching

Create like it doesn't matter, because it really doesn't

Create like nobody gives a fuck, cause they don't, and that should feel liberating