TO: THE FUTURE
Date:
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Categories:
[art]
When you find yourself amidst everything falling apart, the only way is forward.
This one's a little selfish. I'll be honest, it was tempting to write some big, long screed on the past year or so of my life, and, honestly? I started to do that, but stopped myself. I've done that plenty already. Reflecting on the recent past doesn't change or resolve anything. It's time to move on to what's next.
This might be the the first time I've ever drawn characters from their own different universes all in one place, and it didn't occur to me to do that until very recently. It's a recognition of personal accomplishments and progress that can't be taken away. At the core of this art piece, it was important for me to draw something purely for myself. Not for views, or likes, or numbers, or the algorithm, or strictly for anyone else. I've always held that it's enough to create the things you like and hope others will follow (in the classic sense, not the social media sense). It's worked out all right so far.
Fame, fortune, those things were never in the cards. I don't think I'd be any happier if I had one or the other or both. Making something I enjoy, the process itself, learning things along the way, that's what matters most to me, and it's time well spent. Sometimes my art is the conduit to forging new bonds that I may have missed out on otherwise, and that power of expression.
Each and every one of these characters, just a fraction of many, many more, is a part of me. Lived experiences. Outside influences. Things I grew up watching or reading or hearing about. Flashes of inspiration. Something I saw when I was 12 once that's just a fuzzy memory. Ideas that have matured and blossomed into countless petals, expression of self through art, each character one that I hold dear. Reflecting on the past 12 months, I needed that invitation to myself to take the next steps forward. I needed to reach out to myself, a self-reminder to offer that same grace to myself that I offer to others. To be in the moment, to reflect on where I am as I, as we all, head to the future.
I don't know what the future holds. I know the sun will rise and set tomorrow and the day after that, that's a pretty good bet, but the rest isn't set in stone. It's wonderfully terrifying. So I may stop to rest for just a while. I may go back to pick up what I put down along the way. The only path, though, is forward.
I misrepresented things a little from the jump, but you might have figured that out. Because I want to see you there, too, in the future. This slice of self is inviting you, too. I want us, all of us, to make it for as long as we can. To keep going, to keep creating, to keep making new connections, even knowing some of them will ultimately fall away, some of them simply ships passing in the night. But you should know that that someone, somewhere out there cares even when we feel at our loneliest. To see that next sunrise even after the long dark at sunset.
The day I stop creating is the day I stop learning is the day I die. So let's keep going to the future.
Until we meet again. See you next.