bethposting

beth (defunct)

@bethposting

rip

i guess follow me @bethposting on bsky or pillowfort

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boltgsr
@boltgsr

I was exposed to a "haha you have to be obsessed with doing X as a teen to become any good at it" post today and I'll rip this idea to shreds with my teeth. I'll burn it all

boltgsr
@boltgsr

in the year of 2013, when I was already in my 20s, I thought to myself "I want to publish an original story by the end of the year". it is literally a decade later now and I am hopefully going to finally publish an original story in a few months. I could sit here and bemoan how long I took and how slow I am and how I'll never be successful or I can fucking do the thing and be proud of it

boltgsr
@boltgsr

in like early 2016 i was insanely depressed and i wrote this big dramatic diary entry about how i'll never make anything cool like undertale, because ohhhhhhh toby fox was making stuff since he was a teen, ohhhhh woe is me. he's just a guy too but i guess he can do it but i can't because he's been so dedicated since he was so young......... i gave up on music but he didn't, it's so over.........

guess what bitch [2016 me]? it's 2023 now. it's been like as long since then as it was between [toby fox's cringe teen earthbound hack] and [undertale] and you have a lot more 7-8 year periods of your life left too it turns out!!! you can just spend your time now learning and doing the thing instead of comparing yourself to .0005% insanely successful artists who also just happened to start young!!! your learning is not inherently worse just because you started older!!!!

nex3
@nex3

remember that the point of making art is to make art

it is not to make great art or to make art that will resonate with millions of people or anything like that. the act of creating and sharing art is intrinsically valuable and that is enough

(obligatory acknowledgement that since we live under capitalism, sometimes the point of art is perforce to make money to survive. but also that sucks)

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Brisken
@Brisken

The problem is less "you gotta be a teenager to start getting good at X," and more so "teenagers have an incredible amount of free time and unsullied passion to expend getting good at a thing." I work a majority of my week, and don't have the energy to expend afterwards on learning a new thing, nor do I have the passion left to learn it because I'm always thinking in the back of my mind, "this will take months or even years to get even just decent at," and I stop because I can't work up motivation to continue once it reaches the conscious part of my mind.

Teens also are just expected to do a variety of things, and often can find people or clubs to help them out. Where am I supposed to find someone to help me learn music for example when I know literally nothing? Sure there's clubs, but I doubt a bunch of adults who already know what they're doing don't wanna spend a few months getting me up to speed. There's classes, but those are expensive and especially add up if you want multiple of them. Sure there's a plethora of YouTube videos, but that's not gonna work for all people (and most of them require you to have a bare level knowledge anyway, even the ones labeled ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS). As a teenager, you can just go join your schools music club and be welcomed because you're expected to not know anything, you can ask a music teacher for help, you have access to way more resources than the average adult does.

I don't mean to be a downer, but that's just the reality of the situation, at least for me it is. I wish I could spend my time actually learning something, but not everyone is lucky enough to be born with a fiery passion, or a will to just say fuck it and power through having no energy or time to dedicate towards something.

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boltgsr
@boltgsr

I mean, I totally get all of this. It's things I've talked about before and often vented about, because you're correct, you and I don't have the energy or time to sit down and go hog wild on something. The number one thing that drives me insane when talking about art/writing/whatever are the people who go "just write every day sweetie =)" dog i have a job. i have to pay taxes. i gotta go to the grocery store

All that said, part of why I made this post five months ago was because while all that's true, it's easy to fall into a mindset where you just put it off and put it off and put it off forever. I mean hell I haven't done a lot with this story over the last five months because I was dealing with busy stuff at work and moving and etc. etc. etc. But if I just accept "I am too busy, I will never have the time or energy to make Good Art" or whatever then I will never make any art.

Do I have a magic solution on how to juggle all this stuff? No. Do I get that same feeling as you sometimes, that like IDK "oh I don't have the fiery passion, or the determination" and sometimes that makes me feel like a failure as a writer? Yeah. But I made this post in part because I'm working - slowly - on finding new ways of thinking and self-acceptance where I acknowledge my struggles and slowness but don't make those a reason for me to stop.

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cobalt-ex
@cobalt-ex

Lately I’ve been lamenting the passage of time and uselessly thinking “if only i did this or that i’d be done by now etc etc”, so I really needed this. Somehow easy to forget that there aren’t actual deadlines and I can just spend time in the present working on whatever or learning whatever. Looking forward to your thing!

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boltgsr
@boltgsr

yeah I have huuuuuuuuuuge "oh I should've spent my time doing X" brain sometimes and it's something I've had to work on over the last few years, so I feel you. but the truth is you gotta just do it instead of trying to monday night quarterback your past!

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