2020 has been quite the year, and I’ve been doing a lot of reflection on what I’ve done, and what I want to do.
Like many other cities around the world, in March of 2020, a lockdown order was issued in Memphis TN, and I began to work from home in my job at FedEx Services. For the first four months of working from home, I worked on my 12 inch laptop, hunched over in the corner of the floor. Because this was all temporary, right? Corona was going to go away once the weather got warm.
When it became evident that the world had changed in a way that was more long term than temporary, I finally decided it was worth the effort to buy a small table set up and haul my large monitors and docking station home so that I could work more comfortably and professionally.
But that’s my work life. The recent ponderings that I’ve been doing have largely been on my personal life.
I have a problem.
I like to start projects and hobbies, but I can never seem to keep the enthusiasm up to see them through to completion.
In early 2018, I bought a digital camera and started a cooking and story time YouTube channel. I was devoted to posting 1 video a week, and kept that up for all of three weeks before my fatigue and frustration won out and I completely closed and deleted the short-lived channel.
“Cooking just isn’t my passion.” I decided, and I didn’t have the necessary drive to commit to the hard work involved with uploading a video every week.
Later that year, May 28th to be exact, I went through a deeply emotional experience. An experience that I might share with you all one day. It was a situation that left me feeling distraught and betrayed, and I absolutely needed a distraction to get my mind off of the dark and depressing thoughts that had been consuming my every waking moment.
So, I started a gaming channel on May 30th. I have been a gamer all my life, and I decided, you know what? Today’s the day. I’m going to buy a capture card and the latest Play Station game, and I’m going to focus my attention on filming my gameplay and reactions in a Let’s Play format.
Two years later, my gaming channel, betrix3000, is still going. Not strong by any means, but it’s going. I’ve got a whopping, 48 subscribers (hey, I started out with 8 subscribers, so that’s + 40 in two years! 😀 T_T) but It was never about the numbers for me. I always held the position that I LOVED filming myself play video games. Even if no one watched them, I loved keeping the history of my reactions that I could refer back to and indulge in the nostalgia.
It started as a coping mechanism (and worked wonders as such) then morphed into a fun hobby that I enjoyed doing for myself.
Well, finally, now at the end of 2020, that joy of video game filming might be coming to an end. I don’t like the practice of needing to “get pretty” in front of a camera just to play my favorite video game. Sometimes, I’m so stressed and tired, that all I want to do is jump into my favorite game, but recording the game is a completely different (and sometimes exhausting) experience. All for my 48 subscribers and two viewers? Is it worth it?
Looking forward to 2021, I might be seeing an end to my gaming channel. But the decision hasn’t been made yet, and the end is not nigh.
So now that brings us to this blog, I See Life in HD, which I also started late in 2018. Goodness, 2018 was a busy year for me, wasn’t it?
Around November of 2018, I got the bug to start a blog as a means of sharing all my stories and documenting my experiences. It would be a mixture of personal stories, video games, traveling and tech. I wanted to write about everything! I couldn’t possibly be tied down to a single niche.
Well, two years later, and you can see how this blog is going. I can’t even bring myself to make a post every month, much less make a business out of this gig.
So now this brings me to my newest problem.
Within the past month, I have developed the largest obsession of getting into digital art. When I was in middle and high school, I drew all the time. I drew in my notebooks during class and church, and would color in all the pictures with my Rose Art 64 piece color pencil set. I drew so often that I actually became quite decent at it.
And then I entered college, and my drawing hobby suddenly…evaporated. It was almost instant how I stopped drawing and decided I had better things to do with my time. To this day, I can’t put my finger on why I stopped. For 10 plus years, I didn’t do any serious drawing, except for a picture or sketch every once in a double blue moon.
But now, with technology increasing as rapidly as it is, I suddenly have the urge to combine art and technology, and revamp my drawing habits by creating some beautiful art on a tablet. Of course, I’d need to get a tablet first. And I can’t imagine how rusty I must be, not haven seriously drawn since high school. In addition to that, I’ve never drawn on a tablet before! I can’t expect to just pick it up and be used to the tablet drawing experience!
But none of that seems to matter. I really want to draw on a tablet. I’ve been binge watching digital artists on YouTube, and I want to put their advised techniques to the test.
Truthfully, the main reason that I want to pick up drawing again, is because, I have been working on writing a fiction novel for the past few years (another one of my unfinished projects) and the thought just came to me that if I ever got this novel published, I could also be the illustrator for the novel to bring my characters, who are so dear to me, to life.
When I used to draw in middle school, it was always in accompaniment with a fantastical story that said characters would be involved in, and now I can’t seem to separate the two. In school, I drew and wrote on notebook paper. Now as an adult, I write in Word and Google Docs, but something’s missing. I need to draw on a tablet.
I want it.
And that’s my problem. Somewhere in the back of my mind, logic is telling me that this is only going to be another one of my unfinished hobbies that I will soon lose interest in. Then, in a couple of months, all I’ll have to show for it is a few unskilled sketches, and a ridiculously overpriced / underused tablet.
So these thoughts and fears are what makes me pause. But my burning desire to draw is what pushes me forward. And I’m at a loss as of what to do.
Should I do the smart thing, and use my previous patterns as a caution to not pursue this newfound, expensive urge to start a time consuming hobby in digital art? Or should I listen to my heart, and go for it, taking a risk that may one day pay off as a lucrative illustrative novel business?
My hobbies have been expensive in the past, and I’m still paying the price for some of them. Heck, even my piano playing has been falling to the wayside as of late.
I feel like I have too many ideas. Too many wishes. I try to do them all, but I just end up stretching myself too thin, and instead of doing one thing excellently, I do 10 things mediocrely. With that train of thought, a career in digital art should be the last thing I try to do right now. I need to clean up all my other projects first!
But then, why do I want to do it so bad? Why does the thought of my YouTube channels and even my blog make me wince and cringe, compared to my burning desire to pick up a tablet and start drawing?
Like I said, I have a problem. But that’s ok. I’ll figure this out. 2021 is just around the corner, and with the new year, I’ll have new ideas, and possibly a new drive to either start projects anew, or complete the already existing ones. The important thing is to not stress about it. Not get discouraged. And to never compare myself to anyone else.
Thank God I completed my Computer Science degree, so at least I have my stable job – which has not been affected by the pandemic – to support myself and my crazy ideas.
Hey, thank you all for letting me rant a bit. I think I went on a little tangent there, but I appreciate you listening / reading. Feel free to drop me a comment down below if you have any advice you’d like to offer me!
In the mean time, Happy New Year! Love you all,
Heather
