"Just for fun" or "bare the pain"?

[Leonor]

There seems to be two different schools of thought:

Just for fun: do it for the fun of doing it, don't set goals you can fail, don't have expectations.

Bare the pain: set a goal and never give up until you achieve it no matter how bad you feel.

The problem of the first motto, is that people don't usually associate fun with effort. They rather seat in their comfort zone and do whatever comes easy or relax. Some people enjoy challenge and solving problems, that's their fun. They probably were raised this way so they never knew any different. To give up because "it's not fun anymore" is rather lame when people are giving up because learning is painful for them and they rather not know how bad they are.

The problem with the second is that you need to be resilient to pain, failure and obstacles. You'll have tons of problems you didn't expect. But if you resist distractions and easy fun (TV, bumming in the beach). It still seems better as a starting point, as most will be deluded on how good we are and taking learning seriously won't be fun until we convince ourselves that's where the fun lies. That might take a while, though.

[Black Spot]

Easy isn't fun, it's boring.

[TinyBird]

Maybe it's cultural differences, but I haven't really met that many people that belong to the "just for fun" category in everything they do and were over 16 years old. Overall personally I think just having fun belongs together with bearing the pain because if you only work to achieve a goal without enjoying the process at all, well...

Not to mention it's perfectly okay to have things you do just for fun. I sometimes get into this clash of expectations when I, who takes art seriously, and someone else who doesn't take it seriously in the level as I do have to do something art wise and the other person wouldn't be interested putting the same level of effort as I do into it and I'm all boggled about their mindset, but then when I go into, say MTG gathering and meet people who expect me to study the best strategies and cards to build my decks and I go all like "whaaaat" because to me playing MTG is just more casual fun to have (even if it isn't exactly easy and I strive to get better, but my main goal still isn't to win), same as several other things in life, like photography etc where you'll see me do my best to get good images but you won't see me go through the same effort as someone who actually concentrates on photography.
Obviously if I were to go like "I want to be a professional MTG player whee" and not put any more effort into it that I do now, that'd cause problems to me but...

[QueenGwenevere]

The problem with the second is that you need to be resilient to pain, failure and obstacles. You'll have tons of problems you didn't expect.

Well, HELLO, you need to be able to deal with pain, failure, obstacles and unexpected problems just to get through LIFE.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a spoiled rich kid or a naive sheltered teen who's in for a rude awakening once they leave home... Better to be prepared and learn how to deal with shit before you enter the real world. Forcing yourself to do non-fun studying and chores when you're a kid is good for that. It gives you the ability to tackle non-fun but necessary tasks later in life.

[vineris]

It's not about "fun" and "not-fun", it's about reward.

At whatever level of art you're at, whether you're messing around or whether you're reaching for that long-term goal that's really difficult, you are getting some kind of reward and anticipating future rewards. You might like the process of drawing, you might enjoy the feeling of achievement you get from improving, you might like getting paid for your skills and/or you might like people telling you how good you are -- there's lots of rewards you could be potentially receiving. Heck -- you might even like complaining about how hardcore you are and how this makes you better than those other people who aren't as dedicated as you. But you're getting *something* out of it.

When you look at art from the reward angle there isn't really any difference between the people who do it for "fun" and the people working towards a long-term goal. Both of these people are being rewarded in some way for what they do and so they keep doing it.

[QueenGwenevere]

Can I get a food pellet every time I finish a drawing? A chocolate one, by preference.

[vineris]

Can I get a food pellet every time I finish a drawing? A chocolate one, by preference.

Why not? Buy a bag of premium chocolate chips and eat one whenever you finish something.
Hmmm. Actually that does seem convenient and rewarding. Maybe this is what chocolate chips are really meant for.

[QueenGwenevere]

Why not? Buy a bag of premium chocolate chips and eat one whenever you finish something.

I... I actually sort of do that. Only with a small plate of mixed chocolates and nuts. Regular chocolate for fuel and when I make good progress I can eat one of the fancy chocolates. Heh.

[OmenSpirits]

Jeez Queen, warn us when you change avatars! Until I looked at your name I didn't know it was you! (I'm on a small screen).

[QueenGwenevere]

Hey, people throw me out of whack with their new avvies and name changes all the time, this is my revenge...

(Actually no, it's in honor of getting my new webcomic off the ground. Figured the occasion called for a fresh avatar.)

[Birkeley]

I think trying to do either extreme is a bad idea. Like most things in life, you need a good balance. If you only do studies and exercises that you don't find enjoyable you won't enjoy art any more, and why pursue something which takes so much practice if you don't enjoy it? You need to make room for the things you find fun, and for the technical studies too. I suppose it depends on personality too, but I know that in my case if I tried to do either one of those things to the exclusion of the other I would not get very far.

On the subject of chocolate, I once saw a little gadget in a magazine which you fill with chocolates or sweets and keep on your desk and hit the button on it to deliver one when you think you deserve a treat. I kind of wanted one.

[dpaint]

Why not? Buy a bag of premium chocolate chips and eat one whenever you finish something.
Hmmm. Actually that does seem convenient and rewarding. Maybe this is what chocolate chips are really meant for.

If I did that my ass would be bigger than my ego, as hard to imagine as that is, it wouldn't be pretty.

[Black Spot]

If I did that my ass would be bigger than my ego, as hard to imagine as that is, it wouldn't be pretty.

I'm so tempted to ask for pics, but on this occasion I must pass.

[JFierce]

Don't forget to ring a bell before eating one.

[black-swan]

'bare the pain' sounds like some weird fetish, either that or you're planning on becoming a life model.

'Bear the pain'

[vineris]

If I did that my ass would be bigger than my ego, as hard to imagine as that is, it wouldn't be pretty.

But Sir Mix-a-Lot would find you terribly attractive!

[Kamber Parrk]

I think there was one of those gloriously creepy Ad Council anti-drug ads that had a rat with a wire surgically implanted into the pleasure centers of its brain. The rat had a button to control stimulating itself. It eventually ignored everything else and kept pushing the button 'til it starved to death.

I mean. . .

What's to keep you from, eventually, just eatin' the dang cookies!

[OmenSpirits]

Hey, people throw me out of whack with their new avvies and name changes all the time, this is my revenge...

(Actually no, it's in honor of getting my new webcomic off the ground. Figured the occasion called for a fresh avatar.)

Didja put a Native American in it (like I suggested on your blog)?

[karta tajba]

Doing all that hard stuff is actually fun for me, I enjoy going through struggles and then seeing the fruits of those struggles. That just me though.

[keeptime]

I think there was one of those gloriously creepy Ad Council anti-drug ads that had a rat with a wire surgically implanted into the pleasure centers of its brain. The rat had a button to control stimulating itself. It eventually ignored everything else and kept pushing the button 'til it starved to death.

I mean. . .

What's to keep you from, eventually, just eatin' the dang cookies!

B.F Skinner's experiments on rats and food are absolutely fascinating. When the systems were set so one button push = one food pellet, the rats would eventually lose interest in the button/food because they knew they could get it at any time. When he set it so that a random number of button pushes triggered a food pellet, the rats would push the button tirelessly on the off chance they'd get some food (see also: gambling).

So obviously the solution here is to have a housemate give you a cookie after a random amount of drawings produced.

[QueenGwenevere]

Didja put a Native American in it (like I suggested on your blog)?

I'll get to that, man! C'mon, I've barely started chapter one! ('Sides, I'd need to do research so's not to screw it up...)

Keep pestering me and I'll have to make a mob of Cherokees sweep outta nowhere on palominos and derail the plot... (That... would actually be kinda fun. But then what would I do with my 100 backlog pages?)

[OmenSpirits]

Lol. Hey, thought you'd have at least the first arc laid out like any organized project, *cough,cough*. Hah!