2025-12-20
So I switch. And then I switch again. And again.
It's frustrating in a way that's hard to articulate unless you've lived inside this kind of a spiral.
I stopped drawing almost a decade ago after dropping out of art school. At the time, making art felt embarassing. Every attempt came with this overwhelming sense of shame, like I'd already failed before I even started. Around 2017 I tried easing back into it, but once college picked up again, art faded into the background. I don't even remember what I was making then. I know it wasn't digital.
In 2022, I bought a cheap Wacom tablet and reinstalled SAI mostly out of nostalgia. It felt comforting. Familiar. Like coming home. But even then, I really wasn't really making things. Mostly color studies, doodles and sketchbook work.
Around the same time, iPads were becoming more popular with artists. What appealed to me wasn't the screen tablet aspect, I actually hated using those in school, but portability. The idea that I could work digitally anywhere felt revolutionary.
When I eventually bought an iPad and Apple Pencil, I struggled a lot. I mean a lot. So much so that I eventually deleted everything in my gallery before 2024 because it all looked awful to me. I bounced between nearly every drawing app trying to replicate what SAI felt like, and none of it clicked.
That didn't change until this past April, when I started developing my original story. Suddenly, the iPad made sense. Not perfectly though. There are still days where I want to chuck it out the window but it became genuinely indispensable to my creative output in a way I didn't expect.
Finishing art has always been a struggle for me. What's strange is that I didn't have this problem as a beginner. Somewhere along the way, finishing became frightening. I realized recently that it's tied almost entirely to a fear of making something bad. Of not being perfect.
And yes, perfection is overrated. But knowing that doesn't magically make the fear go away.
I love SAI. It will always feel like home. But I genuinely believe Procreate may be better for me in the long run, especially for the kind of work I want to make now. I'm not abandoning SAI, and I know spiraling over software probably sounds absurd. But as an autistic person, I've lost an embarassing amount of time pacing in mental circles over this exact issue.
The problem isn't that I used more than one program. The problem is that I don't let myself finish. I keep chasing the hypothetical better version instead of committing to the real one in front of me.
So I taped a note to my desk:
"If you start a piece in a specific program, finish it in that program."
It's simple. Almost stupidly so. But maybe that's the point.
2025-12-15
I've been wanting a place like this for a long time. Somewhere to put my thoughts, art, fragments, things I care about without the pressure of being seen in the way social media demands people to be. I've never been good at social media. It always felt overwhelming, fast and performative for me. It felt as though I had to constantly explain or market myself.
This is...not that.
I kept thinking about old personal websites. As a child, I'd often spend hours looking up anything relating to Pokémon. I would come across these websites and through that discovered webrings. I eventually stumbled upon several Japanese illustrator sites. There was no algorithm. No likes. It was simply: here is what I make. Here is what I'm thinking. Thank you for visiting.
That kind of internet felt quieter and more human. Sometimes, I feel my age when I read that people younger than me wish that they could have been alive during that era. While the older Internet landscape had its own dangers and problems, there was something more authentic about it.
I don't want this site to be polished or optimized. I want it to be a place where things can sit. Sketches. Writings. Notes. Work-in-progress thoughts. I want it to be a place where I can exist without performing, without explaining and without worrying something is "worth posting".