Chasing your former self is a classic mistake. When you are a young man you will produce a young man's work with a young man's problems. As you become an old man you must work as an old man, produce as an old man, and of course you will have have an old man's problems... one of which is chasing his younger self. The way over it is to remember that there is a season for all things and that plant and reap wisely, with what time and season are available to you.
You'll notice that I've stopped updating Tomoyo42's Room. It's very much an younger man's work (which I love) but I can't make that kind of comic anymore (except in pale imitation -- in a "HOW DO YOU DO FELLOW KIDS" kinda way). Instead I'm focusing on works that make sense to me now. Part of the reason this is possible for me is that I am largely focused on using my art as a tool for working out ideas about problems that seem pertinent now, making out temporary answers or portraits of things as they seem to me, now, in this season. It is a sort of logbook rather than an attempt to reach out and touch something eternal and unchanging which, if it existed, would be the measuring stick against which all creations would be measured and would reduce every work to a measure of success of failure to conform to that eternal something. Maybe it's massive cope, but I don't think the world is that kind of thing (at least anymore). But coming to this point may just be where I happened to have ended up while picking away at my art all these years. What I hope for you is this: that your journey will interesting and as worthwhile for you, whichever way you choose to go. And I can tell you from my own experience: even when you leave that young man's spark behind, there is plenty on the other side. A surprisingly plenty. Consider it one of nature's small graces that what we leave behind can become a platform to propel us with equal and opposite force.
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