Day 0382

It is strange to be sacrificing my time, energy, sanity to an idea that I don't fully believe in. Art! Realist painting -- copying a photo! It has no exalted value, it is no more useful, good or true than anything else I could do with my time, so why am I doing it? Vanity, bloody-mindedness, conditioning of my youth, desire to prove people wrong, to prove to myself that I can do it, that I can master a technique and master my own laziness. But what opportunities for quietude, peace of mind, career advancement, living of life I may very well be missing by locking myself in front of my easel! I close my eyes and I see the picture in front of me. I am tired, I have worked hard, and still everything is all exactly wrong. The knowledge that to approach any level of skill will take years of hard work -- and then the result isn't guaranteed by any means -- is miserable. And what do I want from it? A career? To be a portrait artist? To express something that is important? No! No, there is no grand or passionate motivation. Just an unhealthy, backwards-looking desire to be true to some misty conception I had as a youth that being an artist was what I wanted to do. What rot! And yet here I am, casting off existential anxiety, thoughts of the future, and applying myself as hard as I can. What confusion and lack of clarity.