Originally Posted by
Justin Reed
I'm 35 years old, getting really close to 36, and I've been trying to become a professional artist and writer for about 15 years now and I've failed. I've failed horribly. Sure, I've done a lot of work locally (t-shirt designs, tattoo designs and such) and made a few bucks here and there, but I never succeeded in doing anything professional. My whole life, I've dreamed of writing screenplays and illustrating graphic novels and designing video games but I never made it. I tried. I sent out artwork and story synopses to scores of game companies, producers and comic publishers that accept unsolicited work but to no avail. I wrote and illustrated a little book that I couldn't do anything with. I spent six months illustrating a comic book for nothing. No one would even look at it. I tried to get some friends together to make a movie once, but all we did was talk. I was the only one that actually did something, but I couldn't do it all by myself so nothing got made.
The fact is that there are simpy far too many atists in the world, all fighting for the same jobs. There are too many writers. Too many athelets. Too many musicians. I bet in high school, there was a guy that was amazing at basketball or football and everyone thought he was going to go pro, but he didn't, did he? Everyone knows someone that's in a band and they may be really talented, but they'll probably never get that record deal. There's just too many bands out there all fighting to get listened to. There once was a time when a talented nobody could make it big, but those days are gone. The internet killed it.
In the last couple of years, my mom died, one of my uncles died, three of my friends died, five of my dad's cats died (I watched two of them go and had to bury them both), and one of my younger brothers got a brain tumor (thankfully cured). All that death and near-death got me really thinking about my life. On top of all that, this year, my friend's oldest daughter, whom I've know since she was a day old, is graduating from high school this year. My hair is starting to turn gray. My legs are starting to hurt. I threw my back out flipping my neice around one day. I'm starting to feel old. All that has me really assessing my life at this point.
When I look back at the last fifteen years, I truly feel like I wasted them trying to be an artist. I don't even like drawing anymore. I used to love it. I used to live for it. I used to spend days, even weeks on an illustration and when I was done, I would be filled with a sense of pride. Now, I feel like I've just wasted days of my life that I'll never get back. I feel drained and crushed. Not long ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a tattoo artist and I told him I hated being an artist. I hated having a talent. People have often told me that they wished that they could draw and I always replied "Why?". It's a curse. I see people living normal lifes, working the same job day after day, year after year yet they are perfectly content to do so. I can't do it. I was born to create. The longest I've ever worked the same job was four and half years and I hated every day of it. My head is full of ideas for movies and books and video games and I long to get them out of my head and into the world, but I can't and I most likely never will. Breaking into any industry these days is like winning the lottery. The odds of making it are astronomical.
When I had jobs, I was miserable because I wanted to be creating something. When I'm not working, I'm miserable because I'm creating things, but they're pointless. I've done well over a hundred illustrations, but so what? I've gained nothing for it. I've just lost untold hours of my life, sitting in front of a computer screen or a sketchpad, not to mention all the money I've spent on ink and paper and paint and printers and scanners and art programs and tablets. I'm poor and I have no health insurance and I live in the same crappy town I graduated high school from, a town I couldn't wait to get out of. The front end of my car has been smashed for years and I can't afford to fix it. I had a decent job once, but I hated it and one day I quit in a fit of rage. I was miserable at that job. I dreaded going to work every day. I gave it up to follow my dreams. The problem is that I never made my dreams come true. Now, instead of being miserable with a lot of money and health insurance, I'm miserable and broke. Those people that say "Follow your dreams! You can make it! You can be anything you want to be!" are full of shit.
So, in the end, my advice is to keep your day job and just keep art as a hobby. I wish I'd done that. I wish I'd lived a real life instead of sitting in front of a computer screen drawing stupid pictures. I keep thinking about all the things in life that I've never done. All the places I never went to. Time is the most precious thing you have because it's the one thing you never get back and I pissed most of my time away.
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) I found art....Been drawing now for the past year, trying to develop as and when I can. Inbetween work shifts (which are varied each week) and all the "Life" stuff that you have to do. 
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