Lately, I've been on the receiving end of some nasty comments on my Meta Ads—strangers attacking my original artworks with a kind of practiced cruelty that feels less about what I’ve made and more about what it stirs in them.
I won’t pretend it doesn’t sting. It does. But it doesn’t break me.
Because I’ve learned something: people don’t mock from the arena. They mock from the cheap seats. The ones who know what it means to try, to risk, to care, are too busy bleeding with their own brushes, chisels, pens, and passions to spend their time tearing down someone else’s work.
What I create won’t be for everyone. It’s not supposed to be. Art that’s honest—art that means anything at all—is polarizing by nature. It's the echo of a real human voice, and real voices vibrate. They stir. They divide. And sometimes they offend.
Still, I’d rather offend than vanish.
I wasn’t made to sit quietly or blend in. None of us were. We were made to matter—not in the viral, follower-count sense, but in the real, bone-deep way that lights another person’s path, even briefly.
There’s something each of us keeps creeping toward, peering at when we think no one’s watching, dreaming of in the blank spaces between responsibilities. That thing? That’s it. That’s your reason. That’s your rebellion. That’s your offering.
Do it.
Even when you don’t know how. Especially when you don’t know how.
Ignore the voices trained to destroy what they don’t understand. Because the longer you delay your purpose, the easier it is to harden. To become one of them: bitter, reflexively cruel, allergic to joy. You’ll see them everywhere. The ones who gave up on what mattered and now punish anyone brave enough to keep going.
Don’t become one.
Be yourself. Try to matter. Make what you were made to make. Love even when it hurts. And when it all feels impossible—when you just don’t know how you’re going to keep going—say so.
Say it out loud.
And then keep going.