I was watching a video on the recent achievements in the Tetris community, and my mom came up and watched over my shoulder for a bit. There was a moment in the video where the narrator was talking about the moment Blue Scuti reached the game's killscreen for the first time. Years of effort, countless hours of practice, chasing something that people thought was literally impossible for decades, and then he fucking does it. This is a seriously cool and inspiring story, right?
"Does he get paid for that? You can't spend that much time on something if you're not getting paid."
Are you telling me you literally can't imagine wanting to do something just to do it? That you can only imagine spending effort if it's to chase a cash prize or a wage? That you can't imagine the desire to just... be the best at something, or achieve something before anyone else? I love that woman but a lifetime of being in the system has burned out a critical part of her brain - she can't imagine having a job and not spending all of your free time sucking up to management for a promotion, she is exactly the person all of the "hustle grindset" bullshit influencers and motivational speakers try to turn you into, and i swear to god if she hadn't worked for the government her whole life she would have gotten in on the ground floor of an MLM and made a shitzillion dollars.
It's so fucking depressing.
I do fractal wood burning sometimes and one of the most common things people ask is whether I've considered selling them. Just the thought process of "How would I even make it profitable" because it generally takes a long time to do a single piece is exhausting.
"You need to monetize everything you do" nah
Making art for its own sake is so confusing to people. I know a lot of professional artists who are unhappy with the art they make for clients, or burn out from selling hundreds of prints at art shows and having to Customer Service voice all weekend to people who don’t want their original art, just prints of fan art.
I can find some measure of satisfaction painting and playing music for myself.
That rules, damn
It's actually fairly easy to get started doing it, but the neon sign transformers that won't send you flying if you somehow came into contact with the leads take a long time to crawl across the wood, I'd probably have to get several going at once to make it efficient. Even then it wouldn't be feasible for more detailed stuff where I'm actually making images instead of all the stuff you see on etsy where they just let it go wild.
I've tried to sell art stuff I make to bring in money for more supplies and it's always been very depressing. Something that takes me hours or days to make can be stamped out instantly in a factory and unless someone thinks that "hand made" adds intangible value to a piece there's no way I can "compete" with mass production stuff. I really gave up when Etsy opened the doors to mass production stuff. The things I make always proved a little too weird to sell at art fairs, it's mostly quasi-medieval larp accessories and the market for that isn't huge (and a lot of people who participate are dirt ass poor so their money goes in to essential equipment, travel, and camping fees instead of fancy pieces). idk. Sucks. There should be more beautiful things in the world made for the sake of beauty.
The societal focus on monetizing this stuff feels oppressively omnipresent. I tried doing art school at the local community college, and the coursework was centered around developing a marketable body of work. I make pretty, functional, or tasty things for friends and family, and they think I'm an idiot for not making that stuff professionally, even though they have no comprehension of the materials, time, or market.
I just want the pretty, functional, or tasty things to just be pretty, functional, or tasty. Why can't that be enough?
✨capitalism✨
I'd never heard of this, but I looked it up and it sounds cool and there were a bunch of articles about people dying doing it lmao. I can't talk about safety tho 'cuz I ride a motorycle.
People tend to jump on me whenever I mention it online and say I'm going to get people killed by saying it's pretty safe if you respect what you're doing. My main defense is that every single death I've ever read about was from people using microwave transformers, which you could probably find videos showing the power difference. The microwave ones almost immediately set the wood on fire and will make huge arcs when the circuit is about to close. I've actually gotten brushed by the leads using a neon sign transformer, which run at almost half the voltage of the microwave units when I first started and it doesn't feel great, but you're not going to get fried unless you maybe held each of the leads in a separate hand and created a circuit through your body. The way I do it is setting nails in the wood and then make no contact with the wood while keeping my finger on a kill switch.
Lichtenberg figures?
Yeah