join me on my quest for peace of mind

I mean it makes sense what you're doing, it just feels like you're trying to fix your problem the less ideal way by cutting yourself off from things that you used to like, but don't now for Reasons.

yeah, i'm aware.

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Spoiler(my guess for a reason is that it come from living with someone who's emotionally abusive and does their best to keep you feeling useless by constantly criticizing and yelling at you, and that thought process of always second-guessing yourself has gotten internalized to such a point that it's spilled over into the thing that used to be an escape and refuge from other problem. does that make a little bit of sense?)

Like i think the thing you have to get away from isn't other people's arts, since that's not what your self-doubt is ultimately stemming from; it's your dad constantly telling you to try things while simultaneously sabotaging them through incompetence and possessiveness

yeah, it makes sense, i know i have to get out of this house. i just can't yet, so i need to find ways to feel okay in the meantime.

if it helps, i guess i could try to describe what was specifically bugging me yesterday? since you said you don't know what's going on with my art situation.
to put it shortly, on aywas i'm generally competing for peoples attention and money with my art skills, and i'm not good at it.

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SpoilerThere's a wide range of artists there, in a wide range of skillsets and skill level, and i'm stuck somewhere in the middle in the sort of... "nice art but not distinctive and only good at a specific style" kind of category? There's a few people who like my stuff and actually buy it. it's nice.

But then the site, every so often, has these big sales where, along with discounting the prices of items, they commission a bunch of artists to make a bunch of custom pets, which get sold forrrrrrr, a lot. One such sale is Black Friday, obv, but the other is "Mayday", which happens at the end of May. These two particular sales last for a few days, with the discounts getting smaller after the initial day, and this applies to the custom pets too. So, when you make customs for these sales, you make them in sets of 5, and if all 5 of a set you made sell out on like, the first day, the site will pay you a bonus.

What that last bit is getting to, is that, the better and more popular of an artist you are on the site, the faster your designs will sell, and you stand a chance of overcoming the "I'll just wait until it's discounted more" mentality that everyone's trying to keep because OH MAN this popular artists design is still available?? what if someone else grabs it?? GOTTA GET IT BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE DOES!!! which means those designs bring in more money for the site... so, of course, the site wants to hire them more than they'd want to hire me, because even though my art's nice, it's not appealing to the wider market and it won't bring in bonus cash.

Additionally, I know that I'm slow. I can't really force myself to work without really specific conditions (recently, it's been a combination of streaming after I've brought a soda or energy drink home, like "i got myself this drink so i could sip it while i stream arts, i better get to streaming now!!) and some aywas art jobs, i think including the sale designs, don't allow you to stream working on them? So even though I tried applying to the upcoming mayday sale, it's probably okay that I didn't get in.

other recent events on the site have me pretty convinced that my art just isn't desired by the site at all, though.

(additionally... i have some beef with someone who happens to be one of those popular artists who always get picked. they were showing off their sale designs yesterday, that's what got me onto this whole thing. i'd talk about it here but that's bringing up PETSITE DRAMA so i won't.)