Some of my friends and followers may wonder why I disappeared so suddenly, so I'll try to reason my decision in this log. But know that I generally dislike talking about my "feelings" and can't understand them well, so my words may get muddled.

The general reasons

My mental health has been deteriorating this year due to many different factors. This I presume to be the biggest reason why I can't use the internet safely anymore.

It's no secret to the people close to me that I am easily riddled with envy and jealousy - struggled with it since my teenage years. I can't bear to read posts from my friends and acquaintances about playing games, drawing, or generally doing whatever they want while I rot away at university, spending half of my day at classes and coming back home tired and unable to do anything. I want to be able to work on my hobbies and personal projects, but I lirerally can't. This is why messengers like Telegram became a hurtful environment for my mental health and I decided to quit using them.

At this point I don't even care about missing out on my friends' lives, I know that if I log in even just to read about their life updates, I will get triggered by something minor. If I ever want to know how my friends are doing I can just message them. I don't like this Twitter-like environment that festers on Telegram now, where I just passively read everyone's "blogs" without texting them directly.

Speaking of, I really dislike the amount of shallow, parasocial relationships I developed. I grew tired of interacting with so many people daily and of knowing that they have direct access to my often unfiltered thoughts. Once again, Telegram became Twitter-like, a place where I could send out momentary thoughts without thinking them through - and I feel like it's not the healthiest thing. Even if friends enjoyed reading them, I felt horrible after oversharing.

Additionally, I don't feel safe sharing my opinions anymore (Tumblr is the only place where I can do that safely as I have a narrow following there). I am just tired of having to censor what I wish to say, as it can be blunt or controversial to some people. I never felt fully comfortable expressing my gender identity or my thoughts on romance or friendship because of the people from my past. I was made fun of for being aroace (and told that I "want to be oppressed") and for identifying with labels like voidpunk. I am grateful to those who do support me though, y'all are great.

Why shut down art accounts?

The reasons for closing my art accounts are connected to the reasons listed above. However there are a few extra reasons why I decided to stop posting art online.

Like many artists I sometimes fell into the trap of caring about numbers too much, while at the same time being an anxious person who dislikes having too many eyes on them. This resulted in me posting art, getting a lot of likes, and then throwing a tantrum because of it. I often felt compulsions delete my art altogether because of how much engagement it got. I don't want to repeat this behavior so I will try to limit the amount of drawings I publically post.

I also started feeling obligated to post art, to the point of feeling miserable if I didn't constantly draw something new (remember that I have no time for that because of university and other hobbies). I believe that if I mindfully limit the amount of time I spend on the internet, then I will be able to separate my worth from my art a little.

Connected to the last point - I also want to focus more on practicing and sketching out concepts, and to get comfortable with not finishing my art. My sketches tend to be personal and messy, and I generally separate sketches from finished pieces. I don't want to post them, so when I only do sketches I basically have nothing to show to my audience and feel bad.

Closing thoughts

Was this decision impulsive and affected by my mental state at the time? Yes. Will I still find strange justifications for it? Also yes.

Remember that you can message me on Discord or Steam if you ever want to get in touch with me. Feel free to share whatever you want or talk about relevant topics with me. I will try to respond politely to you always.

With this, I shall log off. I'll be seeing you again... Someday. I have plans for future blog posts, but I'm not going to spoil anything yet.