CaptainJackTHAC0 2020-12-27 21:29:34

Hey man, don't bag on Uncle Rico! That guy could throw a pigskin a quarter mile!

But seriously, great post. If your age is accurate on here, we're close in age range (within 10 years anyway) and I was brought up with the same mentality as you- "you can do anything you put your mind to," "you're sure to succeed and change the world," etc. I totally get where you're coming from.

I was in the "gifted" program in elementary school and separated from the rest of the class based on my grades and silly crap like that. In fact, I remember one incident in middle school where I was sitting with my friends at lunch (my friends were the kids who spent their time mixing massive amounts of ketchup, mayo, and chicken patties into a stew and smearing it on the seats next to them) and one of my teachers came over to me and said "Why are you sitting with these guys? Come with me, you should be at this table." And put me with the "A" students- I felt so embarrassed by the whole thing & went back to sit with my weird "D" student friends the next day.

But yeah, I had that "special snowflake destined to change the world" story drilled into my head from an early age and I totally bought it hook, line, and sinker. What did I know? They were adults telling me that I was special, so they must be right- right?

Ha!

Like you said, after college in the mid-20s I ran into real life and found that wasn't true at all. At the time I was obsessed with filmmaking, but I quickly learned that wasn't a viable career path. The 40 or so short films I'd made weren't worth a nickel to an employer so I ended up getting a "real" job.

My friends and family are either laughing behind their hands at how stupid I was or scratching their heads in confusion as to why I'm not the famous movie director they told me I'd be since about 5th grade.

At least that's what my egotistical brain told me for a few years until I came to the conclusion you reached- we are all going to die and none of it matters anyway. I stressed about not living up to expectations for the longest time, but finally realized none of it matters. "Nobody cares" or "Nobody gives a shit" were the phrases I found.

And I don't mean that in a depressing way at all. In fact, the idea was incredibly freeing. Nobody cares if I create a masterpiece anymore than they care if I create a piece of crap drawing or simply stay home and watch Netflix all day. They're more concerned with THEIR lives and how people will view THEM than they are with whatever it is I'm doing.

That was a great, freeing thought. Nobody cares. I'm free to create good art, crappy art, or no art at all. It's not like "the gifted patrol" is going to come to my house, shoot me, and set my dog on fire because I didn't live up to their expectations.

Same with the social media aspect- I used to be super fixated on likes, comments, reviews, and all that stuff because I didn't want people to think I sucked. I had something to prove! I was destined to be a star!

Now?

Couldn't care less! I don't read reviews anymore. Switched off the notifications so I never even see when they come in. Not in an egotistical "I'm better and smarter than you so I don't need feedback" sort of way, but more in a "I'm doing this for fun- I had fun making this so it doesn't matter if anyone liked it because I felt fulfilled simply by doing it" sort of way.

So I say: don't worry about doing something meaningful. Do what brings you joy. Do what you find fulfilling. If that doesn't make you any money, find a job you can tolerate and make your living that way while you pursue your art on the side.

And hey, maybe your artwork will impact someone and make their day. Maybe like the culinary artist it will be only a single person- but to that single person your art could change their entire outlook on life.

So don't be disillusioned! Sure, we'll all die someday and maybe in the end none of it will matter, but between now and then we owe it to ourselves to live our lives to the fullest and share our enthusiasm with everyone else. Ya never know- it could turn someone's crappy day into a slightly less crappy day.

Like I said, this was a good post. You gave me a lot to think about. Thank you :)

Quarl 2020-12-27 23:14:47

You mean to tell me these feelings of existential dread aren't unique to me and we have a shared realization that we're unimportant vessels of chemical reactions? Let's do drugs and have sex in public sometime. You know, for the dopamine and whatnot ;)

Quarl 2020-12-27 23:34:37

@kungfuspacebarbarian I read the OP and then I read your post too. In the spirit of kind optimism, I figured I'd let you know that I was deeply moved by everything I just read.

However in the spirit of honest nihilism I just have to tell you that it was all a huge waste of time. It was a waste of time for Emrox. It was a waste of time for me. Perhaps least importantly though, it was a complete waste of your time as well. I hope you got your fun juices flowing from sharing deeply personal reflections on a blog posted to newgrounds. I got off on it too, guilty as charged! Let's all do drugs and have sex in public sometime. Ecstacy orgy in the middle of the road is on my bucket list and this may be the closest I ever get to it D:

Tyler 2020-12-28 00:51:51

Yeah I've gone through all of this: grandiosity to disillusionment to acceptance.

I accept that I am average, finally.

We all have to come to this realization. Especially those of us with artificially inflated self-esteem. Almost every millennial coming of age has been conditioned this way.

It was a failed experiment with good intentions that only produced overly-confident, under-performing people. In many ways this crippled us more than accepting we're average would have. Live and learn.

The only thing I can do now is make the lives of the people and animals around me better. Also, all of us here who have created art have entertained people and I think thats good enough. Even if its a small moment of joy brought into the world, it was worth it.

ChronoNomad 2020-12-28 04:28:07

If I've learned anything at all in my decades on this spinning mud ball, it's that there's no sense in being too hard on yourself. That's what other people are for. I mean, I can't help but laugh as I write it, but damned if it isn't true.

That said, I still tend to be pretty hard on myself...especially when life feels like it's hit the skids, and this year has been pretty much just that. Some days I seem to be my own worst enemy, and that's coming from a guy who finds negative self-talk to be a boring and ultimately pointless proposition. But then, I've always been more than a little contradictory.

Life doesn't go how we want it to most of the time. We all make our plans and watch them fall apart, time and time again. Hope for something, desire good things in life with all your heart, but do your level best to never place any kind of expectation on anyone--including yourself. Expectations are the most surefire road to disappointment, heartache, and feelings of resentment.

Hopefully this doesn't sound too pretentious, but a lot of good things come with age. Understanding, wisdom, acceptance, and of course the big catch-all term we all know and love: experience. Some comes easy, while other lessons are hard-won, but learning is probably the most important thing that we, as humans, do. So keep learning, from successes and failures, and just keep moving forward in whatever way you deem best.

As an interesting little anecdote, I once dated (and very nearly married) someone who was over a decade my junior. She was possessed of an almost self-prophesying fear of failure that I simply could not understand. I mean seriously, our failures tend to teach us much more than our successes, and it's really quite impossible to avoid them on the whole. The important thing, of course, IS to learn from them...especially to avoid making the same dumb mistakes over and over. Anyway, when we were engaged, she told me all about her 10-year plan. As she was regaling me with this lengthy diatribe about how the next decade of her life was all mapped out in her mind, all I could do was stare back at her in disbelief. When she was finished, I asked her if she truly believed that all would go as planned, to which she responded, "What do you mean?"

Life can never be boiled down to some written-in-stone plan; not of the 10-year variety, or even 10-day for that matter. Hell, sometimes it feels like just getting through the next 10 minutes takes everything you've got. And yeah, we all make our plans, but we need to be able to roll with the punches, too. That not really something you can learn from a textbook or some on-the-job training course. Take those failures, every one of those learning opportunity defeats, and use them to hone yourself into the person you want to become. Book-smarts are fantastic, but it's the street-smarts that will help you pull through the stuff that no one can prepare for.

Now I'm sure that Quarl will want to hang out, do some drugs, and ultimately drag me into the orgy because I wrote all of this. Or not, simply because I already brought it up and spoiled the fun. But hey, I'm cool with whatever. We're all just a bunch of silly old people, stumbling around and pissing on the world, one post at a time. And maybe nothing and no one really matters at all because existence is a lie, as the nihilism handbook says. Then again, maybe some things actually do matter, and man...I would sure hate to be on the wrong side of things when it all shakes out.

Honestly, I don't get anything out of this. I don't get off on spending time trying to pass on a little of my own personal experience. In fact, I kind of loathe giving out advice that is - more often than not - completely ignored and utterly wasted. You can tell someone over and over not to touch the stove because it's hot, but the burnt hand always teaches best. But hey, in my experience it never hurts to try anyway. Just keep moving forward at your own pace, and I wish you all the best. I'll leave you with this little bon mot, in the hopes that it will make you smile:

Life isn't always a bowl of cherries; it's usually just the pits.

S3C 2020-12-28 05:15:39

The world is your oyster, but more often then not there is no pearl inside, so might as well enjoy the ride to bottom of the abyss. or some other dumb platitude. Now where the hell is Waldo?

DaVaP 2020-12-28 06:37:03

'Maybe you hate it, but the joke's on you because you read it, and I have subtly affected your life, and that means I win.'

Best way to end that train of thought

phenorax 2020-12-28 08:58:17

I know from personal experience that, you are better off following that ´´impact´´ than ignoring it.It will burn you alive and eventually, you won´t even be able to recognise yourself in the mirror.

Ferstofus 2020-12-28 13:37:03

Yeah, steaks are delicious man. I had one just hours ago. Totally agree

Also, pretty cool pep talk

CJspellsfish 2020-12-28 17:36:38

I don't know your point but I did find Waldo

DeadBeatCraig 2020-12-28 18:03:39

I feel this post, haven't accomplish anything but I all I wanna do is be creative, make art and just mostly do what makes me happy.

BoMToons 2020-12-28 20:52:44

I believe a lot of what you posted goes along with "growing up." I find it a little sad that it's taken me 40 years to "grow up" and come to grips with a lot of these feelings. It's still a journey, but, for me, a lot of the fulfillment in my life comes from finding who I really am and trying to be ever-more-true to that being.

One thing lately I've been focusing on is, rather than trying to create for a mass audience, doing things that are more genuine to my interests and hoping to connect with a smaller group that might also appreciate what I'm offering.

It's tough to break through the "noise" or "jadedness" out there though so people will give you more than a passing glance (if that).

TuxedChicken 2020-12-29 16:21:37

I definitely understand this kind of dichotomy, as I'm sure many others on here as artists do as well. That one scene in Patch Adams where he regales the quibbles of aging by stating all of our actions here on Earth for any living situation that permits as much are intended to distract us from the process and inevitabilities of aging. Artists are more or less just people that refuse to grow up to as much of an extent as they can conceive of by insisting they want to create something that might bear fruit or that they can perform as a service (the latter being the far more likely prospect) and most any artist wants their work seen by as many people as possible. The world seemed a lot smaller during the wild-west ages of the internet when clicks on peoples' content on social media never amounted to anything beyond numbers and anything that was to consequently follow in that person's life had to do with their own drive and volition for continuing to purvey their art onto the world (take Tay Zonday for instance; the Chocolate Rain dude just segued into his music career by chasing the lion of success from that budding point). Now that people capitalize directly through these clicks (yes, advertisers on sites and the like have always existed, but the concept of capitalizing as a user on a site was fairly new unless that person were a writer working on commission or something) it's a lot more volatile of an experience for people to feel like they have a real shot at making a difference and as you pointed out, you can unearth instances of people trying extremely hard to do something and failing if you want to because this has all been attempted by person after person hundreds of times over. We get a corporeal glimpse into the fact that we're a microcosm in our attempts at crafting something noticeable and the clock is always ticking with no escape as far as whether we will be able to prove ourselves by making something culturally significant, but our outlook is the more malleable factor. We can start seeing things differently by thinking that maybe instead of running our own show, we can be a cog in the wheel and work as an inbetweener at Nickelodeon, thus contributing to something seen by many and leaving us to feel perhaps a less robust yet very real sense of existential fulfillment.

It's odd growing up as a millennial. Everything right down to the way it developmentally stunts you to see everything right at your feet; it feels like a constant state of paralysis by analysis to have to make any clear decision of what to do and as you said, it's not uncommon for people to try to put a fire under our asses as far as making something and advancing to the next plane goes. I've always felt that I've been trying to do as much as I can yet seeing little actually occur; likely because persistence in one craft is the only real way to see advancement of any larger kind occur. There's no telling how much longer we'll be on this rock but all we can do is try.

I'm just paraphrasing a lot of what you already said though really so I'll stop on that note.

Droqen 2021-01-10 02:40:23

About eight years ago I got a very clear shot of feeling "destined to do something VERY important" when I made a game and lots of people talked about it and said it was something important and new ^^; It's taken me a very long time to recover from that feeling! I found a lot of comfort, joy, and motivation in searching for the things that just bring me joy to DO, regardless of whether or not even a single person will be able to appreciate it.

The specter of relevance does loom dark. This past week I've been having a little bit of an existential crisis, and I desperately want to at least be working on a project that I let myself imagine might matter to a few people again, so that's probably my plans for 2021. Still, reconnecting with that pure internal pleasure is so worth it, if it's something you've at all lost. I think legitimate and deeply meaningful impacts can happen at every level -- from global, to within a city, to within small personal circles of 10 people or 5 people or 2 people, to art that simply exists to affect the artist and nobody else.

At least, it helps me to try and make myself think that way, now and then :)

Droqen 2021-01-11 12:08:06

@Emrox Thanks for saying so! It's genuinely strange; it feels like something I had no control over, it just sort of happened to me and changed my life. I guess I'm speaking from this very particular perspective, but years of "trying to do something important" didn't really turn up much, so I've refocused on "trying to do something that satisfies me" and the important part has sort of warmed up on its own in the background.

The thing about large-scale importance and relevance is it's fundamentally unpredictable--if they were predictable, people would predict them, harvest the importance/relevance, and then it would be gone again.

I suppose this is really more like saying, it's predictable, but it's a huge undertaking to be at the top of that pile, and I've opted out in favour of making my life better ? but I don't think I was ever very good at that prediction game anyway.

So, starting on the small local scale isn't exactly what I'd advise anyone to do... the important part is to *work on something that's achievable* and as meaningful as possible under that constraint, rather than on buying the lottery tickets that have the highest jackpots.

~

I love what you've said about making something important to a smaller entity than even your own self. It's really an amusing and weird thought.

Pahgawk 2021-01-16 16:05:42

With a whole world of people out there and a lot of Big Problems that I don't have the skill set to solve, I hope to just not contribute to making the world worse if possible, and to maybe make things a little better at the smaller scale of people who know me. Your work has already had such an effect on my life by being entertaining and thoughtful and helping motivate my to create more too. I can only assume that the same applies to the other people who follow your work too!

Pahgawk 2021-01-17 14:45:14

@Emrox Just to add another example to the list: one thing that's made global illumination lighting in 3D rendering feasible in the last decade is an algorithm from the '50s (Metropolis sampling) to get better lighting estimates with fewer rays cast. It was written with chemistry in mind but now it's being used in a totally different setting. So I guess you never know what people will make with your work!

Shufflehound 2021-09-11 07:28:35

Not sure how I missed this, but yeah, somehow you verbalised my thoughts 80-90% exactly. Maybe it'll become 100% once I'm ≥25.

The getting bogged down, never finishing anything, feeling like whatever you make has to have an impact etc., is the solution to bash things out and abandon that "responsibility"? I have a habit of judging clients' material for a total lack of message, which in a cynical sardonic story, people may unconsciously find a totally unintended message to take from it. Teenagers can totally find some nonsensical "truth" in short-sighted cartoons that are concerned only with the gag and not the overall mood or theme. I feel a bit dirty helping these ideas come to fruition, but then again turning that whole thing on me, it's just as likely (if not more) that I'm just being a supercilious twat.

Shufflehound 2021-09-12 05:57:50

@Shufflehound @Emrox That's why it's such a good word, it sounds exactly like the kind of word that kind of person would use. One who uses 'supercilious' to describe someone else, they're in turn describing themselves.

I get the intent behind not releasing rip-off stuff, but it could mean more people stick around for the original stuff afterward. The audience comes for the faux-nostalgia/whatever-the-hell, but stay for the original way that it was presented (once the superficial familiarities are removed, or when you find your "voice"). I guess that's the twitter-like-name-hustling side of things, but maybe it's more heartbreaking to release something meaningful, to no fanfare whatsoever. (ofc that's no problem to anyone who can bash-out things that are also meaningful, to eventually build up a following). That's the marketer's side of my brain speaking anyway.

I think that's why I'm getting my more rip-offy music out the way now, to build up experience and potentially get more shares (if my cynicism's correct), before getting my favourites mixed as best as they can be (from what I learnt before) and releasing those.