What's going on, year end /Motivation/Determination?

As of right now life is all about moving to the new house for the beginning of the year. Some of my projects are too ambitious for the apartment and I need more space. The baby takes a lot of time and space too, so right now time is all dedicated to creating, nurturing, and growing.

I've been working on my Monolith series... Art is funny. They say writers and artists are emotional creatures, but I think anyone who starts out with an idea that has them excited, and I mean an idea for a project that should take weeks if not months, in a subjective form, you get doubts along the way.

"This sucks."

"Everyone elses stuff looks amazing."

"What am I even doing?"

"This has been done too many times."

Etcetera, etcetera.

Motivation wanes, ideas dim. You look at the idea and think, what shit. You have to create without motivation, so you trick yourself. At least I do. I come at it with different perspectives, I try and change it up somehow. I then feel that I'm changing the original concept, but if I'm not excited to do it then does it matter? It is my art, don't I dictate which direction it goes? It's not like ANYONE expects anything anyway.

So I think,

"Fuck it, let it suck in high res."

"Everyone else didn't do this."

"I'm creating a body of art."

"This is my interpretation of what has been done."

Etcetera, etcetera.

Then I'm back to excited, and so the emotional rollercoaster journey of this art life continues, and I push on. I feel like those emotional artists everyone talks about were probably mid loop de loop. I'm currently in an unmotivated stage, I just pumped out a handful of works and now I'm back on this monolith series, and I feel lost a little. But I'm used to this, I know what's going on, I'm searching and pulling from somewhere deep to continue on.

I went to an art high school (shout out Metropolitan Arts Institute of Phoenix), and had a great drawing and painting teacher. One day I was struggling, normally I'd fly in her class and draw all day long no problem, but this day I was frustrated, tight, I was feeling that front headache drawers get when they go too long, or can't figure out what to get right. Anyways, she takes me aside and told me that anytime it gets hard like that, that we are actually about to grow. Almost like leveling up. But it only happens when you fight your way up that hill to get to that new "top". If you give up, you slide back down to the level you were at originally. So she said, take a breath, focus on what needs to be done.

That really stuck with me because what she said was true, that year I had made leaps and bounds in my drawing and painting skills. I carried that mentality anytime I worked on a project or tattoo that I felt like I was drowning in. I guess that would ring true with any sort of skill you have to work on.

But yeah, I'm toiling away in the lab, I got daddy duty, and we are prepping this big move. What people should be expecting in the near term is making this website better, getting more art on the merch end, growing this new series!