local anon · 15d
Hi Chira! Do you have any tips for sticking to a personal project? I struggle to finish anything past the concept stages because my interest and inspiration wane once I have an idea/timeline down(sometimes I wonder if I'm destined to do specifically character-related concept art as a job, but that kind of job is already really saturated...). I have ADHD but none of my skills for dealing with that seem to help. Is this something you've struggled with and found solutions for that work for you? I guess the question here is how you sit down and work on something if you have 0 interest in it. Sorry if this is a complex thing to answer! (PS- I've loved sfeer theory for a long, long time. thank you for making it c: )
think of a project is a longterm relationship or friendship. I know people compare them to marathons a lot, but marathons is work and effort and blind commitment. A relationship, however, is about enjoying the mundane every day company even when there's nothing exciting going on. The reality is 99% of a project's reality is going to be boring, mundane, banal, routine, and unexciting -- and that's a feature.
When you hang out with your friends, do you particularly care what you're doing together other than the fact you're just making memories? and a really good friendship/relationship is one that boosts your energy every day just because you have it. Much like how a lot of people can only seem to serially date in shallow relationships (hook-up culture), if you only love a project during the honeymoon period, you're basically just serially dating with ideas that you dump after a month. In the analogy that can mean you're seeing the project as a means to an end or filling some kind of lack in your life or skill, not as a fixture of your life that you're building and want to nurture and have a future with.
A longterm project in practical reality is a lot like attending school. It's your life for, like, X-number of years, everything about you is devoted to accomplishing what you're studying, and then one day you graduate. If you're only doing a project for the emotional thrill then that's perfectly fine but you will absolutely move on as soon as the novelty wears off.
also: when I was younger I used to tell people: you never know what you're capable of until you start and you won't understand what you're capable of until you finish
