2022 Rewind
2022 has been a very interesting year for me personally. So I want to take a moment to reflect on it and share some of my favourite drawings and paintings from this year.
The year started with me quitting my day job in february. The last few months prior to that were very difficult for me mentally. Even though everything seemed to be fine from a rational viewpoint such as having a successful career in software engineering with great colleagues at a great company and feeling supported and loved by the people in my personal life, I felt exhausted and drained. It got to a point where I could barely focus on any work and would spend hours procrastinating, which would only make myself feel worse and procrastinate even more. At the same time I fell more and more in love with art. This led to me decide that if I don’t find any fulfilment in IT I would quit my job and dedicate myself to art. I had some savings which would allow me to take off for a couple of months, and to hopefully find a way to make a living with art after that period. In hindsight it seems like a very bold decision, especially since I only had a single year of experience with art… But at the same time it felt like the right thing to do. Sometimes I just like jump head first into the cold water.
It felt great at first. I felt free and finally able give myself enough space to breath, while having all the time I need to spend on making art. I started a course on oil painting and started to explore more with digital painting. Which I wrote about in my previous blog post. Growing as an artist for me is a synonym of growing as a person. Since making art means opening yourself and be vulnerable. This brings allows for parts of yourself to come into consciousness, which you might not have been aware of before, but still shaped your day to day life. An example for this was the realization of how critical I was with myself. Learning to be kinder to myself not only allowed me to enjoy the art making process more, but it also increased my self confidence, because I just don’t worry that much any more. Although it took until the end of the year to really sink in.
As time progressed and my savings got smaller I started to feel more and more pressure on myself. I compared my art to other established artist with decades of experience and started to think that I am not good enough. My mind spend more time worrying about making money instead of enjoying making art. So instead of actually painting I started to procrastinate more and more. I slowly started to burn out. This downward spiral continued until the realization that I was actually at the same position as before, when I decided I had to quit my job. The context was different, but the feeling was the same. I was exhausted and drained. I was not enjoying my art. I think this was somewhere in the middle of summer.
Upon this realization I saw the pattern, which kept repeating in my life over and over. The search for meaning and fulfilment in the outside and thinking that once I get there I would be happy. It doesn’t matter if I would search for fulfilment through programming, making music or art. The pattern was the same and would keep on repeating no matter much “success” I would find in any pursuit. Fortunately the first step in breaking this cycle was that I was stuck in a cycle in the first place. The next step was to go within. To be honest I find the whole process is a bit difficult to describe, since it was not like I made a big plan and followed it, but rather many small steps each compounding and bringing more insight and making room for my emotions. The latter was probably the most crucial, since this wasn’t anything to be solved by the mind, but rather something to be felt. Some days felt zen like, while others felt like I was an emotional wreck. With time I was able to let go more and more of the need for external validation and with it came a increasing sense of calm and inner fulfilment. This is still an ongoing process, and probably will be for many years to come.
So during this phase of letting go I also realized that I actually still like programming. I started to brush up my skills and opened myself up to new opportunities. With perfect timing in regards to my financial situation I got an offer to work for a local ISP for a part time position. This would provide me with a steady income stream while at the sime time give me enough time to focus on my art. I started working there in the beginning of september and have been very happy with the arrangement since. Still, it required some time to recover from my art burn out and I didn’t really drew or painted much during the third part of the year. I focused on both my mental physical health, meaning I gave myself room to actually do nothing (which was quite hard at first!) and started going to the gym. This allowed me to get back into the flow of making art and I felt the spark again which got me into art in the first place. But this time the spark was much stronger and even continues to grow the more I immerse myself in art.
I am now mostly focusing on traditional art and getting more into the history behind it. My goal is to ultimately work on large scale oil paintings, but ultimately I just let myself be carried by the river of life and see where it takes me. I am grateful for each present moment and thank you for being here. If you resonate with anything I wrote here and want to reach out, I would love to hear from you. Life can be quite the roller coaster at times, but it is also a beautiful journey and I am happy to be on it with you.
To end this little reflection let me share a couple of my favourite drawings/paintings from this year.
Have a good one!