The “If you’re not drawing 24/7 you aren’t working hard enough.” mentality is garbage.
When I was in college there was this ongoing competitive mindset from the teachers /students that: “If you’re not drawing all night / getting 1 – 2 hours of sleep, you’re going to fall behind.” If you’re an artist you’ve probably met this kind of thinking… I’ve heard it from so many pros / tutorials.
One of my professors said that line all the time. I loved this dude. he worked at Disney on many of my favorite movies, and my young self became absorbed in this mindset. About 3 years into my degree that professor had a stroke, and when he went to the doctor they said he had actually previously had something like 10+ strokes without even knowing, brought on by stress, and that he needed to slow down.
Since then I’ve heard tons of other stories accounts of sickness and divorce brought on from addiction to work.
A few years later I was listening to an Animation podcast interviewing Glen Keane. He brought up that there were other animators who would live and breath their work, never going home, barely sleeping, etc.
What shocked me was that Glen Keane said something like “I ignored this idea, and decided to go home every night to spend time with my family, because I could learn just as much from my life experiences with them.”
Anyway I just wanted to take a second after hearing a statement like this again recently and let any young artists out there know that:
There’s nothing wrong with investing plenty of time studying and drawing, but also be healthy.
I too had other prominent professionals tell me to neglect sleep, sickness, and family in pursuit of my career. I now have chronic back, shoulder, and hand problems.
For your health AND your career, remember to eat, sleep, exercise, and make merry. There’s no way you’re going to produce your best work without living a full life. Art requires input after all.
executive dysfunction is so weird because it’s like there are all these obstacles in your way, but they’re invisible? so you try to do something and you run into like this invisible wall and you’re like “what the hell is this?” and other people are like “nothing’s stopping you, just do it” but how can you explain what’s in your way when even you don’t know? you only find out by feeling it out, it’s not obvious.
every additional unfamiliar, unpracticed, or unknown step is an invisible stumbling block. it’s so hard to make your way through the obstacle course. being super careful means you have no hope of finishing on time, rushing means hurting yourself. either way it takes twice as much energy as it’s supposed to.
sometimes you just spend all your time and effort just trying to figure out what the obstacles are so that someone will believe they’re there. but then they say “if there was a block in front of you, why didn’t you go around it? it doesn’t take that much extra time to go around a block.” but you took all your time trying to figure out it was a block in the first place.
you have to feel the edges of it to figure out it’s not a wall that stretches on forever
How about for once we have some support for socially anxious people who are also outgoing or extroverted?
Shout out to socially anxious people who talk too much and regret every word they say
Shout out to socially anxious people who have a habit of word vomiting because they’re nervous
Shout out to socially anxious people who plan out exactly what they’re going to say but get too excited and end up going overboard
Shout out to socially anxious people who get in fights and arguments but later feel ashamed for showing so much passion and scared that people with differing opinions will target them
Shout out to socially anxious people who try to listen and be a good friend, but they talk so much that no one acknowledges that they listen, too
Shout out to socially anxious people who boldly dance in front of people or wear what they want or express themselves, only to get overwhelmed and go hide later
Shout out to socially anxious people who have a constant war in their heads because they both love and hate being the center of attention
Shout out to socially anxious people who are well aware that their voice is really loud, thank you very much
Social anxiety isn’t limited to being shy and quiet. You can be a socially anxious person even if you’re loud and rambunctious. Anyone can have social anxiety; you don’t have to fit the ‘classic introvert’ profile to be valid.
