Depression is a collection of conditions that lowers your mood. It can often hit out of nowhere and it's something I find extremely hard to talk about with other people, because why bother them, right? It's this sort of shyness of the condition that I don't really know how to properly talk to anyone about without feeling worse about it, which is at complete odds with my autism and ADHD. I'll admit I have anxiety more than I do depression.
Depression feels like one of those things if you talk about it, it'll infect other people. I am so used to tackling anxiety more than any semblance of the most debilitating condition on me. Depression removes your love for doing activities, it removes your motivation to do things in general, and it especially hits a lot of the places where happiness normally could be found.
This recent case, which will probably be far past me after I publish this online, has made things very difficult in a way I'm not normally affected by. Usually I can find an outlet to sink into, to just avoid the things that trigger it, but I've been in such a rut as of late that it begins to feel like those things too are losing their appeal to me.
When I work on art, it's hard not to feel as if I'm somehow not doing something right. My art isn't hitting the way I want it to, even with my knowledge of color theory and so many different art techniques to bring focus to what I want. I get more and more aggressive in trying to figure it out and the ultimate thing I come away with is that I'm not really doing anything wrong per say, but my lack of satisfaction is beginning to dull as I jump from experimental aesthetic to experimental aesthetic. When you post stuff on social media or online in general, what people expect is consistency.
I think about creators I've seen gone radio silent on their content production pipeline at the moment- they are toiling in the background, but they're not honest with what they're working on until something has hit a point where they're comfortable sharing that it's in the production stage where there is no return. It's fascinating to watch people evolve over time and it usually comes with the caveat that they produce less even though their talent means they in theory could double or triple their output with every shortcut they learn.
And yet, as an actual creator myself- if I was doing exactly what I was doing at a doubled or tripled rate in the style of what I was doing even just a year ago, I would feel like it wouldn't be good enough to share. I don't think anyone would be against it, but it becomes content as opposed to art.
The word "content" carries a lot of baggage for creators that haven't reserved themselves to the idea that's what they're making. Content has two meanings- it means satisfaction, peaceful happiness- and ascribed to a general, broad meaning to the matter we create creatively. These two definitions feel intertwined to me- it's meant to be a creative matter that keeps your audience satisfied, maybe happy, but it's also not something you are meant to recognize as taking a sizable effort. The best artists trick people into thinking their job is easy while at the same time making you realize it's far beyond the skill or prowess of a beginner or even a fairly experienced person without the right tools.
I've hit the point where I feel as an artist, I could reasonably replicate a lot of art in my own way. It's not like I could look at Murata's work on Beserk and feel like I could replicate it, but if you were to outline the fundamentals of a style and provide the tools used to replicate it, I could hand back something more than passable.
And yet when I replicate the stylistic flourishes of someone like Lisa Frank or try to go for the techniques of the Mario Strikers art style, I am proud of how those look but it also comes with the caveat that very little of what I apply to that really feels like mine in a tangible way. I've become consumed with making fan art because I finally feel like I'm at the level where I could comfortably create literally any crazy idea that comes into my brain, but it also dawns on me that it's not exactly doing what I want it to do. It doesn't create a living.
At least, not right now. Maybe there's some element I'm missing with algorithms and such, but it almost feels kind of like if I put too much effort into something it's absolutely not going to succeed and too little effort makes people mad. Trying to strike that right balance is impossible.
It might be a different underlying condition. But what I think is that I'm bad at putting myself out there, and it's my anxiety and depression holding me back. Maybe I don't create content which draws people in because I'm autistic. Maybe the output of what I put out is alienating. In truth, I don't know what the disconnect is.
I'll figure it out one day. For the time being, I'll just keep trying to connect.
