Losing and Finding Passion

I’ve had this website for ten years.

It was my senior year of Communication Arts at VCU and we had to build a portfolio site in one of my senior studio classes. My professor insisted on it for professional development, even though I felt like my art was far below what would make a professional portfolio. I bought my own domain, laid out the site myself and agonized over what to showcase. It looked very different ten years ago, none of the original pieces are here anymore, but it feels strange that I’ve maintained a catalogue of work for a decade now. 

Some months ago I was reorganizing my portfolio, an annual self flagellation I conduct to wince at old artwork and desperately find something new I had done in the past year to replace them. I decided to add the blog on a whim at the time, figuring why not? It could be nice to put my thoughts down about things I made, things I’ve read etc. But I couldn’t think of what to write. 

Because I hadn’t made anything in a year. 

Well, not exactly true. I’ve made gifts and hobby projects. I have one project under an alias, but I didn’t feel like I had made anything major in that time. At least nothing I could replace in my portfolio. I tried to go full time with my art a few years ago, had to stop and find a full time job which killed much of my motivation. Then the rise of generative AI has dominated the conversation of where it leaves independent artists and that’s where we find ourselves now. I had some hope of what my art career would look like ten years from when I built this site. I studied story art in particular and always thought I would go into storyboarding or comics. My childhood was filled with drawing characters and little panels, notes doodled with speech bubbles and caricatures. Stories were my comfort, I loved telling and drawing them.

But since graduating it has felt like a slow smothering of passion and joy I once had for it. I struggled with depression and self doubt after college and when dealing with financial insecurity, to pursue unpaid internships or a past time that couldn’t make me money felt like a dangerous risk. My 20’s were a rough time and every decision I made never felt like the right one. 

When trying to find my way back to the joy I once felt, I received horrific advice: “Maybe it’s just not for you anymore. If it’s causing you so much misery, maybe take a break and find something else to be passionate about.” It wasn’t necessarily bad, the idea of taking a break and indulging in something else. I knew they had meant not dedicating my every waking moment to art and building a career out of it. But it felt like being told to give up. It gave me such a sick feeling in my stomach. Especially when I knew there was truth to it, it was causing me acute pain. I just didn’t know why. 

So I tried it. I told the few clients that I had that I was not available for any freelance work. I put art in general on the back burner and tried to pursue other things. I still drew and painted, but I was afraid of getting too drawn into the expectation of making it profitable again, so I stuck to gifts and projects with friends. I didn’t try to study or improve in any meaningful way. I turned my attention to other subjects, to find something else I had an interest in that I could perhaps build more meaning out of. Horticulture, coding, tech, medical care for people or animals, I looked into trades that I might find interesting. I spent two years slowly separating myself from the goal of my youth. That’s when I discovered my second horrible truth. 

I wasn’t passionate about anything. I felt strangely ashamed about the realization that I couldn’t find anything else to spark joy in myself or even mild focus. Any subject I dived into I quickly lost interest in, my mind always wandering to something else or seeking distraction. I was miserable. Looking at my website only deepened my misery, a testament of what I once strived for and the feeble attempt that I made for it. I wanted to delete everything, scrap the site, empty my folders, and never think about it again. I couldn’t quite muster the courage to do it, so I left it alone to become the weight I dragged through everyday.

I found myself beyond bored last fall when I saw a random advertisement on instagram. It was for a writing challenge; create a short story in  two weeks to win the first place prize. I signed up on a whim, the prompt being vampires an easy draw for me, and spent two weeks writing a 2,000 word story. It consumed me. I spent those two weeks completely absorbed, spending every moment thinking about how to write certain passages, editing and reediting, asking my friends to proofread, and lamenting that I couldn’t write 10,000 more. I felt possessed. I didn’t end up winning the challenge, but I had gotten to the final rounds of judging. I felt and still feel proud of myself, to have made this small story. It was just fun. I still had a passion for creating stories. 

I immediately thought about writing more. I pictured comic panels of the characters, how they would be framed, the settings, the world surrounding them. I felt an itch that eluded me for so long, followed by a fear. My skills had severely dulled over the last two years, I thought what would be the point in trying. I had so many failures to launch that it’s not even funny. There’s at least three discontinued comics under my name floating around the internet. And the idea of starting over again at 32 was terrifying and felt foolish. 

I was at a loss for what to do. I craved to tell the story that was chasing its tail in my head, but I was trying to give myself every reason not to. It felt like I would break my own heart again if I left it unfinished or grew too frustrated with myself. During one broody week I happened to visit my friends’ house for a night of ttrpg gaming, my one outlet for my storytelling craving. I noticed he had gotten a printer of decent quality and had shown me a long binder stapler he had purchased to make zines. For the last couple of years he had been working on ttrpg’s and his own comic and game, and he wanted to be able to make tangible copies of what he made. It’s hard to describe how I felt. I was happy for him, and proud, that he’s found so much joy in this pursuit. He’s grown a lot as an artist as well and I hope he keeps creating. But a tiny part of me was envious too, that he seemed to have no hesitation to purchase these things for his passion, to keep growing. It took me nearly 5 months to convince myself I deserved a better drawing tablet at the height of when I was freelancing, but I always had doubts that I wasn’t professional enough for it. 

I expressed this feeling to my husband who is closer to our friend than I am and he surprised me with his answer. “You think he doesn’t doubt himself?” Of course I didn’t, I said that was what I envied, that he could do it despite the doubt. To push through and keep trying. That I wished I could find that within myself. My husband replied:

“Nobody is stopping you.”

I’ve been chewing on that for the last couple of weeks. It’s always easy to say the simple thing that’s holding you back, it never encapsulates the effort required to overcome it. But sometimes it just needs to be said aloud. I want to try again. I want to overcome the fear of heartbreak and tell stories again. 

So for now, my website can stay. I don’t know what it will look like a year from now, but this post will be my statement to my future self:

Hey, I hope you’re still here. I just wanted you to have fun with it, this go around. If only one person enjoyed whatever dumb idea you made, one is enough. It was always enough. All you need to tell a story is for someone to listen. 

Love you, keep creating.