When is it time to be done with art?
I’m hesitant to share too much about my own struggles because I’m not really looking for them to be addressed over this question or treated like I need to just overcome x hurdle and get back into it. I’m not looking for that. All I’m going to say about them is that art used to be something that didn’t make me miserable and now it is something that is making me profoundly miserable at every turn. I am just trying to answer this question. I don’t know the answer.
When is it genuinely the right time to start abandoning art as something that I do? Where is that line for you? When does a struggle with art cross the line from being just a hurdle to overcome with repetition or practice or changing mindset or what have you, to something that can be solved by stepping away?
That’s the main question I need help answering. So… if you want to stop reading there, thanks for your time.
I’m gonna rant more because I need to get stuff off my chest.
This never used to be the way I felt about art. I’m not asking for permission to stop because I already am and I don’t plan on starting again soon, but everyone treats me like I’m expected to create, and that it’s a universally good thing that I draw. Nobody listens to me when I say that it makes me feel like a subhuman fraud to sit at my desk and draw. No one hears me when I tell them to their faces how it sends me into depressive episodes. They look at me like I’m crazy, and try to solve the problem that I’m not drawing or that I don’t like doing it at all without actually addressing that it is contributing to my awful mental health.