: Artist or no?

The past few years I've spent very, very little time on deviantArt. Only a few hours a year, actually. I don't really know why that is. At least as a spectator, I'm still very much interested in the art that takes place there. And I still hold that place in high regards. But I guess it's hard to keep up an interest in a place like that when your own creative spark is missing. 

I used to be very passionate about creating stuff. I wasn't very good at it, but I created. I liked to experiment and try out weird stuff, although 99% of that was never seen by anyone but me. Most of the stuff I submitted there was, when you start to break it down, mostly the same stuff, the same techniques and filters, over and over, done in a slightly different way. And I guess that's what killed my spark. Through all my experimenting with different things, I never really was able to learn how to properly use any of the tools I experimented with, I was never able to use any of it in something that I deemed worthy of being submitted for anyone and everyone to see, and therefore never grew as an artist. 

I still feel the need to create something from time to time. I still have that itch to make something that I can show off, that I can be proud of. But it's just an itch. It never evolves. Or very rarely, at least. I did try to create a new Winamp-skin while back, a year or two ago. I really like that skin-design. It's still in progress, and in safe storage for once, but I just don't know if I'll ever be able to finish it, simply because I don't feel I have the skill needed to create what I actually want. It's frustrating as hell. And the fact that Winamp-skins in general are outdated, doesn't help.

I'm not a writer either. I was gonna say "I'm not a writer anymore either", but then I re-read my written stuff and realized I never actually was a writer. What I have in my gallery there is just awful, it really is. Granted, most of it was written from my then state of mind, which is in no way compatible with my current state of mind, and without adhering to any sort of rules of writing as a sort of rule of my own. But reading it now, as a spectator to my former self, it just... It's not very good. It made sense back then, I guess. And some of the themes still apply to my current life. But I just don't feel any connection to my old self, and I really just find it embarrassing. I'm gonna leave it up, though, because... Well, why not?

But yeah, I'm not a writer. I mean, sure, I write stuff like this. I do it all the time here on my blog. And I guess that makes me a writer of some sort. But I'm not an artsy writer. I can't, and never could, write proper artsy stuff. It's just not my thing, unless I'm in that state of mind. And... Well. I'm still proud of most of my visual stuff, or at least my Winamp-skins. But as I said, all of my written stuff is just embarrasing. That says a lot.

So, yeah. I still very much want to be an artist. But I just don't think I have what it takes. 

Oh well.