Hey gang. It's been a while.
TL:DR at bottom, this is gonna be a rambling, ranty, probably incohesive stream of consciousness.
I haven't been creating much in the last few years. Life is hard and gets harder as you get older. During the last ten years I've been battling depression, AuDHD, anxiety and other various mental ills that have prevented me from being able to focus, to write, and to live, and it's only gotten worse with age. Some of these things I was hoping somewhere deep in my heart that they were a phase, something I would grow out of. But as it turns out, many of these are with you for life. I wish so desperately that I had the money to be able to get myself a therapist or psychiatrist, someone that can help me pick apart my brain, find the apples that are poisoning the bunch and help toss them out. But, like apples and lemonade, I will make do with what I have: myself.
All these mental things I have going on have made it nearly impossible for me to actually work on things I enjoy like music and art. Things that take some sort of discipline and time management skills, things that you can't just veg out on like playing videogames or binge watching things on YouTube. I still work on things now and then, short demos, little idea blurbs that feel good to get out into audio. Hell I've got hundreds, maybe a thousand or more audio files of random things kicking around. However, making anything like that for me is rather rare and only grows moreso as time passes. I have had the eternal problem of opening FL Studio, and either staring at it blankly before closing it ten minutes later, or working on an idea for something until a minor roadblock is met, and then I save it and never open it again. Not out of frustration, or even out of boredom. I don't know why I do it. And it has been this way for at least six years of the last ten.
This is not how one should create.
Over the last few months, as the ripe age of thirty is rapidly approaching, I've been doing some hard thinking. I've been asking myself, "Is this it? Is this just what I am? A man who works a job he doesn't enjoy and nothing more? Am I a person who just can't create anymore? Is that why my happiness is gone?" And the answer to that last question, I think, is yes.
Back in a happier time when I was making music, I just did it. I made music, I put it out there on the internet for anyone to find, whether they enjoyed it or hated it, and why that feeling left me of not giving a damn and just doing things I think has something to do with my ever-decreasing view of myself.
My battle with self-worth has been occurring all my life. Not just whether or not I am worthy of any attention, affection or love/kindness of any sort, but by extension, if anything I make is worthy of being shared.
There's been a thought of linearity that has always plagued me: every single thing you make has to be better than the last. Because if it isn't, then surely no one will want to listen to it. People will stop caring. People might even start to belittle you.
This anxiety around my own work has been suffocating. This battle to appease a random, nebulous void that I know is both uncaring and cruel; that I might be able to tame such a beastly machine of negativity as the Internet at large, is a farce at best, and lunacy at worst.
It's safe to say, general negativity online has had a great effect on me. I still remember past users here who made it a mission to review bomb some of my tracks years and years ago. It's such a small thing, a number going down just slightly, a mean review left by someone who was probably twelve at the time. Things as small and insignificant now as people you thought may potentially be friends rejecting your outstretched hand, people snapping back at you in the comments of a video you'll never watch again, a person simply saying "this song isn't good." It's true what content creators say, when they say that you only remember the negative comments. And that was before the age of bots farming engagement in the most effective way possible, with inflammatory comments and posts, made only to make you click by a computer with no thoughts, trained to make you weep for what humanity has come to, or incite your rage so it can be used by someone else to prove that "those people" (whatever that group is) are deserving of hatred.
I hate it. I've grown to hate everything about the internet, everything that it has become is awful. There are few places now that are free from it, but at least here on Newgrounds I can be (mostly) sure that any hate I do receive at least comes from the heart, typed out by hand by a human! And if that's the best it gets, I'll happily take it.
Honestly, this was not a planned post. I didn't even plan to come to Newgrounds, it's lived in my bookmarks bar for years without me opening it, but a simple misclick brought me back. I checked my notifications and found something that stunned me. A user, who found one of my songs, and was nostalgic for it, and was happy he found it again.
That instilled in me a feeling that I haven't felt in years: the joy of creation. The warmth that out there, someone enjoyed what you made. On that track there were tons of positive comments, but for some reason, this one stuck out to me. And it immediately placed itself in the same spot that all those negative comments had taken up before. Every reason I had to not create is now at odds with every reason to create, and I haven't felt this hyped about making anything in years!
I don't want the negativity to control my life anymore. I want things to change, but I have to change myself first. And I think that best begins with me trying to release any anxiety I have about creating. Not only that it's okay to make things that aren't the best, but it's okay to make things people don't like. It's okay to make things that maybe even most people don't like. The fact is, someone out there will, inevitably, like what you make.
The barrier for reentry for me is a tall order, but by battling each one by one, maybe, just maybe, I'll begin to get better. And I'll begin to create again. Where the fire once was a few choked, fading embers, a new flame has been kindled. And I want to nurture that until it's a raging, all-consuming firestorm.
Thank you for reading, if you made it through the whole thing. I could probably organize my thoughts better into a real post, but I'm tired, I've been crying a little and I just wanted to get it all out.
