When Do You Draw The Line?

July 26th-27th, 2024

Alright, quick check on the to-do list: Some productive time across the week, could be better, but decent for what it is. Got some work done on the sketch, I'll talk about it further down. Got into that game dev course a bit, feeling out Unreal again after awhile and boy, do I hate documentation. Still didn't shave down the site, sorry. Anyways, moving on...

For a blog, I haven't really been rambling about random things. I've mostly been rambling about important things, and that's not very fun. Let's talk about something: When are you qualified in a skill? To be more precise, when are you an artist, a writer, or a programmer, and not just someone trying things out? Am I a writer when I want to make a story, or only after I've made one? It's kinda interesting to me since this isn't something you ever see said out loud. You mostly see people self-identify, whatever they say they are is true, simple as that.

But... that doesn't really help when you want to become one of these. Is there a certain point where you say you're "good enough" to be called an artist, and if there is, how do you check? I used to just think it was purely arbitrary, maybe you could make a goal where you can say "Okay, I guess I'll call myself an artist now," after finishing 5 or 10 drawings. Thing is, I do have a skill I feel like I'm proficient in: Writing. Not just getting my spelling and grammar correct, I know a decent bit about storytelling and feel confident that I could call myself a writer.

So, now there's a foundation to work with. Why do I feel like I can call myself a writer? Sure, I think I'm good at it, but I'm not an expert or a professional, and I don't think that's exactly why I feel that way to begin with. If I had to put my finger on it, the real reason would be familiarity. If there's something I want to write about, I can. Rants, story ideas, or whatever, I can get into without any friction and work on for awhile pretty easily. I'm a writer because I'm capable of getting into the flow of writing easily. This blog is part of that, actually.

Alright, then if that's my definition, what does it apply to? Well, not much, actually. When it comes to being a student, driving, or any fixed task I have to repeat a lot, it's easy enough for me to sit down and get into business, but that doesn't really apply to what I'm talking about here. In actual skills, I can't really say I have this in anything other than writing. With programming, I can do assignments from a class, but I don't know how that translates to the real world. How could I code a program that actually does something? It feels too isolated.

For art, and by the way it passed 12 AM at the time of writing so I'll add 27th to the date, there are still points of strong friction here and there, parts that I have a lot more difficulty pinning down and take awhile to get right. It's not that writing is always smooth sailing, but it's never a huge struggle to get through any issues, regardless of how much time it takes to find the right words. It's about having enough of a foundation to work in any conditions I run into.

It's not a huge deal, but I think having a solid distinction helps, especially since it's easy to be more objective about it. Anyways, that's it for this week. I'll see about getting more done over the next week, maybe getting the sketch done or finishing a chunk out of the game dev course. Whatever happens, happens.