baby's first journaling session

If you're an artist, especially a younger one, you might be able to relate to this situation I've put myself in: I'm getting older now, the world is awful, I want to make something worthwhile with my art and do new things before everything goes to complete shit and we all die. That's great in theory, but, there's one huge, awful, unfixable issue looming above me - I do not feel I am allowed to do anything new, that I am not actually an artist, that I am a fraud and lying to myself and everyone who sees my drawings, that I need explicit permission before I am allowed to do anything new.

For me, this is something I've been dealing with my whole life and something I can personally chalk up to a learned helplessness (if that's the right word) from my childhood alongside my general anxiety and paranoia. It is so engrained in me, I have no idea where to even begin to unlearn this. I am 21 and still feel that I need to ask for permission to do anything as if I were still a child.

There are two things I want to do but feel stuck on: I want to make something with my stories and I want to try and do some kind of "art commission" thing (because I cannot physically work). The more urgent one would be the commissions, so it's the thing at the forefront of my mind. I deal with the typical doubt that I think most other artists feel: I'm not good enough, it's not the "right" time yet, etc etc, but also on top of that I have very specific worries and fears - To do anything like this, you need a payment processor like PayPal or Stripe, or Cashapp or Venmo, etc, and to use a payment processor, you need to give them a ton of personal information and connect that account to your bank account. I cannot put into words just how much crippling fear I have based around the small chance I would somehow end up putting all of my information into a fake site, or that somehow trying to connect a payment processor to my bank account would "go wrong" and "ruin everything". And that I need someone over my shoulder telling me, "yes, you can do this" or having them do it all for me while I anxiously pace around my room.

There's some truth to the fear and anxiety I feel - you should always be careful when using real information for anything on line, of course - but it's to a point where I just, cannot do anything. I cannot do the thing I want to do. And it's such a shame. I don't personally know any other artists who do them to try and get some kind of reassurance from.

And then of course, more personal-art-stuff, I feel very silly thinking that I could make anything worthwhile or finished, and so I should just stop while I'm still ahead. There's less "real world" stakes in this compared to the previous topic, so you could consider this issue much less serious (and I suppose it is), but to me, they both feel the same. I feel so hollow. Everything I make feels so hollow. I want to do something meaningful, but, who am I to think I could do something like that? I am not a real artist, I don't draw anything of value - posting online has made this feel much more real as well. Everyone says to not let the numbers (or lack there of) get to you, but how can it not bother you when you get 0 real human interaction? When you put something out there, something you put so much time and effort into, you do all the things (keywords, tags), and not a single person sees it - or, "someone" DOES see it, but that "someone" isn't a someone, they're a bot.

This is not a new or profound statement: the "new" internet feels awful and dead and, frankly, soulless. When I was much younger, I would post to Deviantart. My awful, 10 year old child drawings, I would post there. And they would be seen by plenty of people. And plenty of people would still interact with them. Sometimes I would even get comments. When I was around maybe 13 or 14, I got my first ever piece of constructive criticism over my art from Deviantart, where I was told not to use the airbrush or similar brushes for shading (something we all really know now, but,) and, that genuinely helped me. I miss Deviantart so much. No other website has been able to replicate the feeling that old Deviantart had. I want to show my art to people, and talk about it, and see other people's art, and talk about theirs. I want reassurance that I'm not a fraud from people who have no stakes in whether or not they hurt my feelings. It's a very silly thing, and I feel sort of pathetic over it, and I feel even more pathetic writing about it, but letting it stay cooped up in my mind isn't good either. Something something, journaling is good for you, something something, getting your thoughts out on paper (or typed) is good for you, I guess.

I see people talk about "the art community", but, I feel like there really isn't one? Not anymore. Not like how there used to be. There doesn't feel like there's any shared art spaces online anymore - maybe if you're talking about fandoms, then yes, of course there's community, but I am not someone fandom oriented. I am someone art oriented. I am one of those people who seeks out original art and characters instead of fan art, just because of how my own interests align. This is probably why my two favorite art related places online are Toyhouse and Artfight: Toyhouse is OC-focused because of it being an ... OC storing site (+more), and then Artfight is for trading art of OCs during July (and god I wish there was more on-site events than just in July lmao).

I'm not a writer or someone who has clear thoughts, this is a mess of words, and I don't have anything profound to say at the end of this. This was not supposed to turn into a "social media/modern internet sucks" rant but I'm not going to change it LOL! Because it still kind of fits into what I was talking about, kind of, sort of, not really but still, it's going to stay.