Hi, I’m back. I turned 19 two weeks ago and started tattooing again. I’m serious about it this time though. But back onto the topic..
Do you ever stop and think about what you wanted as a child? What you dreamed of? I do, everyday. Because I have all of it, and I seem to ignore it way too often. I think it’s not a mystery, nor a groundbreaking fact, that I’ve been losing my mind over drawing since forever. ‘’I turn 19 this year, I gotta be serious about it’’ night and day for the past month. We’re no strangers to the concept of social media warping our perspectives, but when it comes to art it’s completely different from anything else. I remember the days when your Instagram feed or followers or TikToks didn’t count as a ‘’portfolio’’ and drawing was everything that you needed, when media consumption wasn’t so easily available, when things actually had an impact on us. The constant scrolling fucked me up more than I’d like to admit. Nothing I did could even come remotely close to the changes and progress I promised myself by looking at all those talented artists that, by the way, have probably started their careers when I was still picking my nose in 3rd grade.
I didn’t seriously pick up a pencil until I was 16. And I got so obsessed with it I think I made everyone around me suffer the consequences. Pretty obvious too I’d say, since it’s all I talk about. But you tend to forget these things when you’re so far up in your head all day, everyday. I scrapped all of my hard work and HUGE accomplishments trying to make myself better for an invisible audience that didn’t even matter in the reaching of my goal. Are we surprised? No. And so I ‘’lost my spark’’, at least in my head. The truth is that I don’t even actually care. I just want to draw and I get easily caught up in silly things because I can’t convince myself hard enough that they’re actually stupid. And even this month, I accomplished great things that I forgot about because I was busy beating myself up for the ones I didn’t complete. That honestly, all I needed was to pick up my sketchbook and start scribbling something I liked, not an hypothetical viewer. And I posted it, too. I remember how proud of myself last year just for being able to press the ‘’upload’’ button on Instagram… it’s too easy to lose your way when you’re constantly bombed by other people’s work, content, drawings, witty ideas…it’s exhausting. Everyone tells us to self-brand but does anyone actually want to?
Concluding my humble take on this topic, let’s go back to what I was saying. Great, I turned 19 and started tattooing again, and this is exactly where I wanted this post to go: I tattooed someone that wasn’t me. Like, I actually did it. There’s a human being on this planet who’s walking around with one of my drawings on his skin forever. I was so busy being worried that I forgot to be present in a moment like this and I regret it, because saying that this is another dream come true would be an understatement. This is exactly what I meant what I said that I have every little thing I’ve ever dreamed of as a child, even the most silly thing I could’ve thought of. And losing sight of something like this just doesn’t feel right. I mean, even the fact that I gave myself a tattoo on the couch is crazy to me, and you don’t have to know me that well to know how much this means to me. Now I’m stuck to have of the drawings that I would’ve never posted with a gun to my head imprinted on my ankle for the rest of my life and I’ so grateful I do.
This whole narrative of needing an audience for your great accomplishments to be truly great is bullshit. I did a hundred other things this month that I’m proud of and even if I didn’t show them to everyone I still celebrated them. I didn’t ‘’lose my spark’’ I was looking for it in places in the wrong places. People that I look up to admire my work and every time I take moment to stop and think about it I feel overwhelmed with a type of joy that cannot be put into words. The ones that matter the most to me like what I do and I think that, at the end of the day, that’s what truly matters. Even if you’re the only one liking your work, it matters. Creating matters even when no one sees is and it’s humbling to realize it at so late like I’m doing now, but if I learned anything this month, this is it. I don’t want my posts to feel like some sort of ‘’advice’’ or ‘’wellness posting’’ because they’re merely my own reflections on these topics that mean so much to me. Now that March is coming along it finally feels like the air is starting to clear… and I feel so much better. I plan to make a proper ‘’February dump’’ post with pictures and everything very soon because I have a lot of cute stuff to show you and also some new fragrances to talk about. I’m busy on some other projects at the moment besides studying as usual and I’ll start working again very soon… sigh. I know that you’re probably thinking ‘’why does she always has something going on?’’ And to fair, you’re not wrong, but since I’ve also started covering this kind of topic into my blog apart from pictures or life updates, I like it more and get to write a lot. I actually get to talk about things seriously.
