Giving up.

There's a saying out there- that you'll always regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did. There's another one: It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission. 

Both are true. Lately, i've fallen in love with this show called "Battle for dream island" Seriously. Watch it. It's a short series on Youtube that's a lot like Total drama island- except, replace all the characters with talking objects and you've got the idea. I literally went on a archive binge yesterday, it is so amazing. Anywhay, I came across this video while I was snooping around Jacknjellify's youtube:



My mouth literally dropped. This guy, this guy right here- he did it. He accomplished what I always wanted to do (make a cartoon series), and even became famous!!

And you know why? 
He didn't give up. 

Back around the same time this came out, I also had a little comic book series. Okay, not little- I'd finished writing and drawing 26 episodes of it. It was just as poorly drawn, if not even worse. I also made a youtube channel and launched some badly done animations, just for fun- to see what might happen. That's where the similarities end- because while he went on to get thousands of subscribers, I left youtube forever and let my account to shrivel up & die, deleting most of my videos in a fit of rage.

I'm not jealous of Jacks' success- I'm inspired by it, because i see where me, and so many other artists went wrong. We gave up way too soon. At the first sign of criticism or trolling, I gave up. Instead of continuing to work on animation to get better- i dropped it and came to dA. I'm incredibly happy that i'm here, but in life you NEVER want to be left with that niggling feeling of what could have been had you kept going. 

I'm eventually going to go back to youtube and find out. But until then, I just want to tell people who are unsatisfied with their art- don't stop. Take a break, but don't break. If you keep going, you probably won't become a superstar- but you can at least know that you gave it your best shot. Now's the time to get started- and i'm writing this just as much for you guys as for me. You don't have to be big to be cool, and you DO have the time to draw. Just GTFO tumblr and facebook and grab a tab!(let)

Pretty sure everyone's heard this a gazillion times, but I think one more time can make a difference. 
It would've made a huge difference for this kiwi.

BUT. There's always a butt. There's a flip side to never giving up is just as important: It's knowing when to make a "tactical retreat"- knowing when to quit. If you're an artist working on a project, and your heart just isn't in it, if you're not feeling it anymore.. If you have to force yourself to write a story or draw a strip- it's time to give up, at least for now. You can always come back to it later, and nobody wants to read soggy stories or sad strips! 

It all depends on the person, the time and the place! Maybe you really are too young and this isn't the right time. Maybe you should let the idea mature and percolate- so that when it's finally ready it will be beautiful, like fine wine that gets better with age. 

No matter what you do though, quit the pity party and do something!

Kiwi out. I hope this might be helpful to someone. In some way.
This was totally inspired in every way by DamaiMikaz' epic self-help journals. I'd check them out for more ancient wisdom and junk.