2026posts:2026_journal:2026-04-22_optimization_is_killing_my_enjoyment []

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# Optimization is killing my enjoyment

Let’s start with disclaimer. This is based on my personal experience and only apply to my personal art only. When I do commission I have like entirely different mindset and how I can handle work.


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Personal art is important for me. It’s a way for me to cope, venting out my vice, showcasing my idea and most importantly expressing myself. Therefore personal art is a way for me to enjoy being myself and I would like it strictly be that way as in other should have no say in my personal art. But occasionally as you can see. Sometimes when my confident is running low I do require some external validation. But most of the time my drive to crate is already strong like even if people don’t enjoy my stuff but I do and that is all that matter to me.

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Problem is my enjoyment in personal art has been tanking. For a while now and I’m unsure of reason… Well I do have a couple of ideas. Real life stuff has been eating some part of my energy that I needed and What I’m left with I would rather use it with my work. But I feel like that is not the problem. I’ve been through worse. But I’ve been also observing myself when I try to draw personal art. It has some question already pop up even before drawing the first line lately. It was

1. Will it look good?

2. Will it take too much effort?

3. Can I post to social media?


Which these questions would not be problem in itself. But have you notice something? These question is a question about HOW my personal piece will be ‘effective’ use of my time and none of the question is about how much I’m going to enjoy it? Do I think it look fun? Etc. Sometimes after that I’ve been thinking about wanting to simplified by OC design out of it to be ‘efficient’ to draw. I don’t know when does I start to think about optimizing my personal art and throwing my enjoyment out of the equation. But the more I ask myself this before even working (unknowingly) the less enjoyment i feel out of it. And the more I feel like art machine.I hate being or feeling like art machine. I hate being view as ‘content creator’ I’m a person, I just happen to make art and I post it online. 

Why do I have to optimize part of myself for other. The more I care about does it look good 'enough' for other people the more I feel less like a person. If you're wondering why do I keep struggle about this kind of thing so much. I've been talking about them a lot. Well you see.... I'm kind of person that care about efficiency. I'm (kind of) by a book person who pretend to read 1 page of manual and rawdog it by hand. Learning thing when it explode and I either quit for a bit and try again or quit for good if I try it for like 3 times already. Because I don't learn when I'm trying to be efficient and I don't learn while i'm holding a manual book and treat it like bible.

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AH well my problem is this whole trying to draw and optimize myself to be efficient when it come to personal has become something that killing my enjoyment. I know drawing my own oc that not too many people care about them is not ‘good’ use of my time. I should draw what I think people like if I want to maximize my effort out put. But I shouldn’t think of my personal art like that.


I enjoy making my oc way too fucking detailed because I genuinely like filling out their detail even if it not a good use of my time. I like drawing weird kink and adding romance sparkling in it even if no one but me are into them. I know that drawing self indulgence and some deeply personal art is not ‘effective enough’ It might not look good and it take a lot of time and I might even can’t post it. But still… I think my art should be messy so that I can learn. I should try experiment because it’s messy and because I have done messy thing before, I will learn how to make it neat. And I don't want to learn for the sake of optimization but I want to learn because I truly enjoy them and the process of it. I probably can't even draw if I try to learn it 'from the master' and not just push myself to learn it on my own.

Hell, this post. I don't even know who enjoy reading my rambling thought but I DO like to share my experience. I do like to write about random thing that make me want to share. I like to complain about my problem. Creative is not like sunshine and rainbow. It's HARD. It's full of moment that you question your own worth. It's full of moment when you look into people art and compare it to your own and wondering what is wrong with me. But I think it's like all thing. Everything is hard for some and easy for some. Like I've said it before.

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 I saw myself through distorted lenses. I 'think' of myself as someone who's by the book. Learning thing before doing it so it's best use of my time. But in reality I'm that idiot that throw myself at the wall and either I learn how to climb or I head butt the wall until I can bruteforce myself to learn with sheer arrogant of "BUT I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO IT!" or get force to be smart and think "Oh yeah I think I need to read before doing it lol" And yes I should stop trying to optimize my personal art.