am I

am I actually passionate about just system? growing up I was considered more of a creative artsy person but I ended up pursuing a degree in STEM and even in my artistic pursuits I kept digging for clear objective benchmarks of success. when I was in depths of my acrylic painting journey I created my first ever self portrait in realism that allowed me to win multiple regional and national awards. it was very satisfying to just draw a grid and match the proportions exactly how it was appearing in the picture and it was a very concrete measure of talent people would just tell me "it looks EXACTLY like the. it felt like getting an A on a math exam because there was ALWAYS a right answer to a question and in physics there was ALWAYS an exact number you had to reach in an experimental set up. in a world there was no universally accepted way to gauge artistic talent awards and exhibitions was simply just not enough when everything was influenced by trends, personal taste, and cultural moment. SO same the EXACT copy of an existing picture. however the meticulous attempt to perfectly portray the minute details ended up yielding a TRAP. I became a copy paste robot that kept creating meaningless duplicates and ChatGPT can do this so easily now. it's so easy to fall into this formulaic side of this world because in STEM there are so many concrete short term objectives you build a model, tweak it, and it often leads to very visible measurable progress in a relatively short time. in contrast the artistic world often requires long introspective periods of growth, experimentation, and revision. but why don't we appreciate the beauty of subjectivity and uncertainty when that's the VERY thing that makes us human the failure, the judgment, the taste of an individual human. there is so much beauty to this slower and more organic progress. it is SO freeing to not be bounded by the same rules of progress that already exist in STEM allowing us to experiment, innovate, and express ourselves in ways that don't need to be "right" or "best" according to someone else's standards in a world full of BS rules we live by. in either case the key to staying motivated as an artist or in any field is finding the intrinsic value in the work itself and not solely in how others measure it. STEAM (not STEM) ep. 6 and follow along my journey as I begin to find the true unique definition of success for myself not anyone else ;)