Man, I gotta stop looking at and comparing myself to other artists. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE is more successful than me. Fuck. all my decisions have been bad. I have this shitty combination of a huge ego with not enough self esteem to put my career or what I want from life first. In fact, the only reason I haven't let anyone force me to quit tattooing so that I could make more money to support them is that I managed to make it so that tattooing paid better than anything else I could really do.  |Basically I tricked myself into putting my art first. I've never felt that my artistic vision is worthy of my full attention. when I sit down to do a drawing I'll be a few hours into something and I'll think I should be working on something else because my art doesn't look enough like something someone else would think is cool. I'm so angry and unhappy. I know how I could become more successful. I could go get tattooed by people with connections and hang around them, eventually get a job at a shop with a higher profile, do the convention circuit and try to become enough of a name to tattoo collectors that I get clients that want to get tattooed by me because of who I know and the scene I'm part of. As it is now my clients either get tattooed by me because of the quality of my work or because the shop is close to their house.
          I would also like to say that I realize that this is all my fault. If I was more invested in tattooing in general from the start tattooing would naturally have  enriched me more. Because I am always questioning myself, my own motives and the meaning of my endeavours, I and all these things are more stiff and don't come as naturally. I'm not zen. I don't live in the now. I'm always watching myself do things instead of living in the moment.
        Furthermore, I'm just so scared that I'll be rejected or embarrassed by my treatment at the hands of those I look up to that I never try to meet them. And usually if I have any interest in impressing someone I will automatically think of a way to screw it up. I fucking made myself look like a douche in front of Ed Hardy, for Christs sake. Its like high school, and I was told by punk rock not to try to gain the approval of the in crowd, but punk rock never  told me that I would toil in obscurity forevermore as a result of adhering to my principles (which, by the way, I'm pretty sure I'm compromising in other ways on a daily basis anyway).