So I've been tired of deviantart lately. I think it is a mix of many things. I have been thinking about abandoning some of my time-suck website accounts to uh, stop wasting so much time. But yet something keeps me coming back here every once in awhile. I think it's all the people I watch. Though my watch is nearly always packed full (576 right now, down from around 1,300 the other day) and I am slow with looking at it, it is still a source of inspiration. I do enjoy sharing my work but I made an interesting observation.

When I started here, I was just like so many others filtering in and out of deviantart daily. A teenager trying to get started with photography. Newly introduced to the wonderful world of photoshop, I tended to play with it a bit too much. I didn't own a decent camera and used my mom's 3 MP point and shoot. I was submitting to photo.net as well...and probably some other places I have already forgotten about. My observation is this: when I started, granted I didn't have a lot of people watching and commenting, but I seem to have gotten tons more feedback then more recently. I had the worst crap back then. All of it has been deleted. Not even one or two gems in that bunch of crap. Yet, many of the deviations were self portraits. Dorky self portraits that I made funky colors or grainy black and white in photoshop or something. I was definitely trying to be creative back then, but in hindsight, I was just like so many others on here. (Which, by the way, I probably still am...) It irritates me that I have tried to evolve. I have tried to break away from that genre of teenager-breaking-into-the-creative-online-world. Yet the most love I have gotten here was with my most terrible, amateur, crap work. And the folks who used to watch me back in the day and comment and fav and give me all kinds of love clearly don't like what I do now, which may not be great, but shit, it's better than what it was.

Now I feel like I get nothing from this site. I am not really looking for critique anymore. If someone who is knowledgeable and/or on a level higher than I am, I would appreciate some insight into what I do. But it's not my reason for being here because frankly, no one who fits that description seems to even bother to peek at what I do. (No offense to anyone who comments on my junk once in awhile.) I feel like I am in some kind of strange middle ground. I don't completely suck anymore or do things that are completely mainstream, but I'm also not very good at what I do, nor am I very creative with it anymore. That hurts to say, but I can see it and more accurately, I can feel it. Which on deviant art leaves me...in a huge pig pile of other people in the same situation I'm sure. Not quite new at this, but not quite good either.

I already left photo.net months (perhaps years) ago due to sheer boredom. I also got a little tired of the elitist mentality of many of the older contributors there. They do not appreciate what you say to them about their work and take any advantage to crap on you, especially back in my hay day, for being young and naive. Maybe I deserved that. But I did want to learn. And I did appreciate all the amazing work I saw there. I guess I just didn't like the layout of the site. For example, it's so simple to keep watch on a particular artist here. There, not so easy. Actually, a huge pain in the ass. Which brings me back to deviantart.

dA has it's definite downsides. But somewhere in there, there are lots of upsides I guess I am having trouble seeing as of late. I feel like I am ramming my head into a brick wall. My watch is pretty much what's keeping me here lately and I hardly even look at it anymore. What is it about this place that keeps me coming back? I know it used to be the community. But I don't come around much anymore, and from what I remember, the community feel kind of got lost awhile ago.

I hope at least one person reads this so I don't feel like all I did was have a personal therapy session that delved deep into my deviantart history. Sorry for the long post. Something just sparked me to dig a little into how I feel about this place and prompted me to ramble about it. Not sure why. Doesn't really matter. So long.