i chose not to follow my dreams and now i am a 30 year old fat miserable alcoholic. im starting to think my life choices were a mistake. how is life on the other side? are dream followers miserable too?
>>34457790What was your dream?
>>34457842to be an artist
>>34457852Lost time is a painful thing, but you do not help yourself or your dream with obesity and alcoholism. Suppose you are told one day that you have cirrhosis of the liver or require diabetic leg amputation. From bad to worse.Pursue health and art in your free time, if nothing else it will be a good cope.
>>34457852What kind of artist do you want to be exactly since art is an extremely diverse and unique thing.
>>34457881thats a symptom of being miserable, alcohol isnt preventing me from being an artist, choosing to have a stable career and trying to be financially responsible has given me a life thats not worth living>>34457885Ive always wanted to be able to tell stories and create finished pieces for settings. not really concept art but things like frank frazetta. or be able to create art for a picture book or something i can tell my own stories.
>>34457907You should dabble in writing/artistry when you got the free time then. That should help with your endeavors.
>fat miserable alcoholic>wants to be a writerNgl OP, that sound like a textbook artist to me. You already know, that you current life isn't for you, now go and let your art be fueled by your suffering. Or maybe you aren't even suffering enough...
>>34457907The tiredness and ill health from alcohol and obesity is antithetical to the discipline and energy required to learn and make art...what is your skill level with drawing etc?
>>34457909>>34457926i have been feeling more inspired lately. i got triggered recently by a piece of media and it made me reflect on how i might have been able to create something too at this point in my life if i had stuck with it>>34457945I was decent, can copy images and draw and color still life when i spent enough time on it. i practiced regularly when i was in school for something else but totally stopped 3 or 4 years ago when work became overwhelming. i cant even find any of my digital images, they might be on another computer
>>34457790>>34457852I hear you. Art and creating stuff in general was one of the very few things that brought me real joy in life, but I was always told it led to nothing. Now I'm just old and miserable, and no amount of money will ever change that. I loved spending night after night drawing until the morning came. It was tiresome, but it gave me a sense of accomplishment. Nothing I ever did professionally ever came close to the same feeling of satisfaction I had when I did that.Now I'm old, frustrated, and frequently behave like a sad sack of shit, with no energy to interact with most of my friends.I'd rather struggle but feel a sense of personal satisfaction than this empty shell of a life I have.
>>34457790"Starting to think"Lol
>>34457790People who succeed at following dreams have a very lucky and very rare combination that is Actually possible if you were born in the first world, and rarely possible if you were born middle class elsewhere.First thing, your parents must have had happy lives, that means they were safe, free, and they had at least moderate success to be hopeful and surprised by your ambitions.If they were not free, traumatized, they will impose whatever rules they internalized "worked out for them". You will be led by them and shunned. If they were not safe as in security matters, they will become overprotective and they will guilt you once you wish to follow your path.If you had good parents, you would need to not-be the bullied kid in school, preferably you need to be the leader of the gang. A talent is a gift, but only if you discover early and focus on developing it without distractions. If you're not talented, you would need a strong motivation to stick with it into mastery. If you happen to "like everything", or if you're "good at everything", you're doomed. You will want to place time for too many things at once.Finally, you must be highly sociable and have high self-esteem to look for chances outside of school, routes for training abroad, routes into gigs and professional work to make it your living.If you have none of that, you will fail at chasing dreams and you will regret the time wasted. You're best resigning to build the expertise and financial power to pave the way for one of your kids to become the dream chaser. It's possible, it just needs more than one person to make it happen.
>>34458593Also, how do I know? Because I've got all the shit stacked against me, and I guess my talent is learning. Parents can fuck you up good, even if all they had was good intentions and never hit you or scolded you. If they were loving parents, you may become too empathetic when this world rewards selfishness and domination. If they never scolded you, you may take it to heart too deep when you fail something. If they never do sexual things you may be corralled by media to think they're wrong, if they don't banter you, you won't learn to banter. Drinking is not good, but if they don't communicate the nuance you will reject 95% of social invitations.Modern psychology is full of shit. The goal is to return you to function, and because of some twisted reasoning of ethics, they believe you shouldn't be better than the average person, or you would take advantage of others and that's a no no. They will tell you, you alone are responsible for everything in your life, and that you alone can do whatever to succeed, and that success it's not really possible so you should be content with being a miserable shit. Life doesn't give a fuck about any of that. A team will always be better than a loner. Manipulating is also a way to bond. Taking advantage of others is a source of happiness to your chimpy brain. But also, there are time-windows for everything. The dream girl is taken by 18. The dream chaser started at 12. The successful professional stuck to his job since 24 and didn't move. The losers stick to other losers, and nobody will move a finger to make it easier. Money isn't jackshit, but it's something a lot of losers are driven to. Time is everything. Time and friends. And I have neither.
