Nihilism Is Eating Me...

Anyone who possibly cares possibly realizes I haven't posted here lately.  Part of that is I have a blog now--technically two, but one is far more active than the other--that makes me money, although not very much.  Still, that only covers journals.  When it comes to submitting Deviations, I lag, and lag, and lag, because I feel, what's the point?

I go on DeviantArt all the time.  I look for art, mostly fanart, all the time.  I run search for fanfictions, and I go in deep using quotes to get specific phrases; doing my best to see if fanfictions of the sort I want actually exist.  I also look for fangames.  If it isn't clear already, I am a passionate defender of unofficial, not-for-profit derivative works.  True; there's a lot of crap to wade through, but there's also lots of nice things that legal and PR concerns keep official content creators doing.  However, it bears mentioning that some fanworks I want to exist, simply don't.  This is true across all media, and in one case, on Fanfiction.net, I actually took matters into my own hands and wrote the fanfiction I wanted to see, and it was even well-received.  As to other sorts of media?  I'm torn and stalled.

My fanfiction was well-received, I think, because I've long been good at literary composition, but I can't say the same for any other artistic talents.  I don't draw very well, and because I spend so much time admiring other people's fanart, I've longed to rectify that.  I've taken some steps; bought some books, taken two three classes, I got a tablet to help me play Drawception, in a desperate hope that somewhere along the line, a spark would ignite, but it hasn't.  I now am able to do an okay job drawing something I see, or drawing based on steps provided in a guidebook, although many people who think the final products look okay don't realize just how much time I spend doing how much erasing and correcting before I'm done.  However, when I try to draw something that starts as an idea in my mind, I botch it.  Last night I tried multiple ways to draw a figure in an action pose, approaching it free-hand, starting as a stick figure, starting as squiggles, and it just didn't come out right at all.  Towards the end I was just rage quitting and scribbling.  This is a bad place to be, because as I said earlier, the reason I value fanworks is their potential for adding things to the world that should exist but don't, and so simply copying things wholesale won't do for that.

Maybe it's just that no art class I've taken have taught figure composition from scratch.  The books I own do, but they lack something classes have, and something that I keep discovering is of tantamount importance to me; I need peer feedback.  If I'm not getting a grade, or a review, or a paycheck, or something that comes from other people, I repeatedly find that I just don't see any point to doing things that take effort.  Once again, the fanfiction writing is no exception to this, because I was getting positive feedback on almost every new chapter, and lots of favorites.  I also got the occasional criticism, but that's okay; these were challenges I could meet, and I like to think I did.  That doesn't happen with my art, though; a few people favorite on occasion, still fewer comment on occasion, but I don't get feedback.  I don't get told, "I like the way you draw", or "Your drawings would be better if you took this suggestion".

As such, even though I have plenty ideas for artworks that should exist, I find myself giving up on them; especially since those I've actually submitted, I find full of flaws.  (Converting lineart and coloring drawings in digitally is another of my big weak points.)  I find myself wondering just how much time I would need to spend, doing what sort of things to improve my skills, before I was capable of creating the works I truly want, to my satisfaction.  Maybe there's some other classes I can take that are more suited to my personal goals, and maybe those few talents I do have (writing and playing the saxophone) are there specifically because good schooling nurtured them into me, but as politically incorrect as modern tastes treat this consideration, I also have the dread that it's just genetic; that I don't have all that much control over what talents I do or don't have, and no amount of training will fix it.

So yeah; nihilism is biting, and it sucks.  It's not just with regards to drawing, but rather a whole bunch of things I wish I had the time, talent, and effort for, but feat I don't.  I find myself at a point in my life wherein I have no idea what I should be doing with it, or where I fit in.  I have very little idea of what I'm capable of doing or what people even care if I do, and this is because I have very few friends in real life, and none that I know of nearby who share my interests.  This means I have to turn online to get some semblance of the peer appreciation I'm lacking, and some semblance is not enough.

Anyone reading, reply if you like.  I'd appreciate it.