It's been a gradual process and one that's helped me. Dropping the weight of how I think about myself and should be, in order to actually do art. I think it started with the scandals around the major studios and publishers, then how Independent Creators were monsterized and how others who were monsters vindicated by their fans no matter who they hurt. I realized this wasn't what I wanted to do, and no amount of fame or fortune was going to change than. I don't even like the wider social scene I'm part of, I used to love being in the furry fandom and I don't think I'll ever leave it but it does feel like its leaving me.
We talk a lot about keeping the fandom weird and unmarketable, and draw distinctions between capitalism and commercialism as if the latter isn't worthy of critique in of itself. Every day I wake up and do the rounds of checking the front page of each art site, and its been the same story for a while now: Reminders for adoptables, Last chance for YCHs, Cropped Previews that you need to sign up to Patreon or Adultstar to see. The only people who I consider doing art because it is something they're passionate about are the freaks and geeks doing hardcore fetish material who's love for what they do knows no bounds. I'm not into what they do personally - or usually - but its just not enough to save me. Because its not that people are making money.
Its the mindsets I've encountered especially on Twitter. Acting as if every little thing will hurt artists, and the feelings of entitlement they have towards your support. Art was never an easy job, but the way on how there are platforms and services to make monetizing your hobby, that's all recent. That's all an anomaly. It was much harder to do that when I was an idiot teen, and I went to gallery openings to ask professional artists how they made money. They went out and did things and not wait for solutions. They took risks and showed initiative, they were inventive and hooked up with others to create collectives and offered their collegues space in art shows. They ate together. I hate how people talk about artists like they are this silent majority, a monolith of the same shared needs and interests. Some of the biggest names on ArtStation sold the rest out to get involved and promopte cyberfraud scams. We are not all on the same team.
When I hear a story of someone being exploited for their starry-eyed naivety for thinking they finally made it and got their dream job as a game designer or animator. When I see another creator drowning in hate mail for putting themselves out there. When I feel someone is making themselves out to be this spokesman of artists, this whisperer of the collective creative unconscious only for them to milk it with their ass on the back of their fans, chewing on tender ko-fi drumlegs and gulping wine from the patreon vineyards - worse still are those that LARPed as a fellow starving artist or used their platform to beat down other creatives they didn't like or feared competition. Yes, I am still mad over Isabel Fall.
I don't want any of this. I don't want to be an artist. No amount of money or fame is going to make me happy. I don't want the baggage that comes with the title, I want to throw that all away into the ocean. So I did.
Then I started painting for the first time in months.