I’m sorry if your not in the mood for this sort of blog post, as this could maybe get a little bit deep I guess. I’m just gonna write this out, mostly for me, then in the future when I may feel down again I will read this and get my bum back on track.Last week was one of the strangest weeks I can remember in a very long time. I experienced a massive high on Thursday, and then, very very randomly got smacked around the head by a massive attack of self doubt.

Seriously, I’ve never experienced such a high followed by a massive low before, it really was quite odd. I looked online, and it seems this happens a lot, something to do with using all your energy up during the high and then having none left for when you come down.

It’s so weird to me though, I don’t understand why, but what happened was this. The two beautiful cosplayers, Liz Katz and Amy, a.k.a xThunderbolt, both within about a space of 10 hours, somehow found my drawings I had done of them and basically they both messaged me to say how much they liked them.

This blew me away, I never ever even thought that someone I drew would one day actually see the drawings I had done of them, let alone actually like them. I, for a period of time, was up in the clouds so happy, it was brilliant! However, this is where it gets weird … I then started to doubt myself, like really really badly.

I don’t know where it came from, it was so out of the blue, and makes no sense that this happy moment should make me start questioning myself. It did though, I still just got my head down and carried on with my 3 hour morning drawing routine. I was proud of myself for just focusing on drawing even with my mind going bonkers, but that’s what I hear you MUST do, you MUST stay focused!

It didn’t go away though, in fact it got worse, it started to scare me a little bit. It made me look at myself and realise I have changed a lot as a human this past year because of art. I started questioning if I could handle this change that is happening to me. Thing is, at work I’m still hanging out with my friends who are all still living, breathing and playing videogames like I used to, while I’m changing and focusing on trying to get good at my art and almost leaving the past me behind. So me and my circle of friends at work don’t have the same bond like we used to.

I think I’m realising that the only thing that connected us was videogames, so with that gone, I’m beginning to not have anything in common and so just feels a bit weird. I have been increasingly aware of this, especially over the past few weeks. One of my mates is even almost giving me a hard time for not playing games anymore, but I’m so mentally strong and focused that I don’t let it get to me.

However, I realise I need to change my environment to match my mind. I keep hearing how important it is to surround yourself with positive artists friends, and I think I’m beginning to understand the importance of this now.

Anyway, this horrible feeling of self doubt got pretty bad by the end (Saturday morning) and then I just dug deep into my soul and stopped everything I was doing and focused… I looked at my Chie poster on the wall, and I said out loud “I want to be making characters like you in the future Chie”. Yeah, I actually spoke to a poster lol It helped me so much though, and then I went upstairs and painted the wall lol

There has been this patch of the wall in the front room I’ve been meaning to paint for a month or so now, but I’ve been so busy with drawing that I didn’t get round to it. So having just talked to a poster in my art studio, I then very randomly looked at that mark on the wall and decided I would turn that mark on the wall into the self doubt and paint over it lol

It’s crazy I know, but I say be gone evil one! So this negative feeling I had, I’ve managed to turn into a positive by realising that I need to start finding some art friends, I’m gonna join a local Art Workshop which I’ve been too scared to do up until this point. Also, as a really cool bonus, all this self thinking made me realise I needed to sort out a family feud I have had for the past few years. So that’s finally been sorted too just by me talking out the issues, that felt fantastic to have sorted out.