Huzzah! French fan! Tres bien!
(One of the few things I remember from fourth grade french class haha)

Thank you very much! Your work is lovely as well, I’m sure you’ll be able to take it far! :)

Everybody goes through this. I know I’ve gone through this pretty hard, and I can’t even say that I’ve found all the answers quite yet. Maybe I never will. But that’s nothing to be afraid of.

Ask yourself this question: What inspired you in the first place? For everything we do, there’s always a reason as to why we continue to do that particular thing at all. Maybe it just made you feel happy, maybe you thought it just felt right, maybe it’s something that challenged you. That’s why you draw, or write, or dress the way you do, or think the way you do, act the way you do, whatever. 

Somewhere along the way of you digging deeper for your passions, you face challenges that come in the form of bad grades, unsupportive parents, perhaps some financial road blocks, or just the whole entirety of LIFE itself, which all harden you up to mold you into the most difficult block you have to face: yourself. 

You doubt yourself, you pressure yourself, you critique yourself, you distract yourself from doing that THING that you love and were once inspired by because you don’t think you’re good enough, or somehow the idea that you can’t do something was planted into your head by an accumulation of all the negativity life can throw at you. 

It’s your MENTALITY. 

People, pressure, the future, friends, breakups - is that all getting you down? Separate yourself from what brings you down and focus on things that help you PROGRESS. There WILL be people that make you feel like you fucked up. Maybe you did, but maybe you didn’t. The key is to take only the best out of every situation. Don’t burden yourself with the things that can’t be changed, instead work on the things that can. 

Remind yourself to be open minded. If you’ve tried to do something over and over again and have repetitively met failure, consider the idea that perhaps you haven’t found the right path yet. It’s okay. People mess up, people make the wrong choices.  You can’t actually be sure until you’ve actually lived out those choices. Just remember that it isn’t the end of the world.

I watched a show the other day that was talking about our human instincts, one of which is to feel stressed in a situation of danger or uncertainty. Now, we’re not really dealing with wild animals or dinosaurs anymore, so what kind of situations do we find ourselves in that might be uncertain or dangerous? Figuring out our futures, for one. Figuring out who we are, figuring out what we’re going to be doing for the rest of our lives. Those are the “uncertain” situations we deal with today, so it’s natural to feel stressed. But unlike the life-or-death situations that instinct of ours was made for, NONE of these things are life-or-death. 

So breathe. 

Take time to reassess your situation. Be open to possibilities. You weren’t given a script upon your birth that describes exactly who you’re supposed to be, what you’re supposed to do, and how the rest of your life plays out. If you’ve always thought you were going to be an astronaut your whole life and suddenly something happens that prevent you from fulfilling that dream, don’t worry! You can do something related to it, or something that requires the same skill set. There’s so many niches out there, and there IS one for you. You just might not know that it exists yet. 

Life works in funny ways. You’re going to end up doing what you were meant to do. But that doesn’t mean you can just sit back, coast, and let everything unravel itself. If you lose inspiration and it hasn’t hit you yet, then maybe you aren’t even looking for it. People might say otherwise, but inspiration doesn’t always just COME to you. You have to look out for it: it’s in books, movies, people you know, people you don’t know, photographs, the internet, a conversation, a day dream. You have to recognize inspiration when it strikes.

Take that inspiration and add hard work to it. You’ve got a formula for success. 

I’ll try anything once. The most I’ve ever done is a  one layer stencil, but nothing more complicated than that. I’d love to learn more about it, though!