When family doesn't support your goals

[OgonoArtFamily]

Sup tapastic peeps, today I'm gonna be talking and giving advice on what helped me deal with them. Fair warning: the tips may not work for everyone.
OGONOtalks is a youtube series were i give advice/rant about controversional issues at times.

[Greg_Dickson]

I haven't watched the video yet, but I can say that I totally relate to this topic.

[OgonoArtFamily]

Hopefully you can take something from this video xD.

And yeah, it's a topic that isn't talked about much in detail with other artists. I always wanted
to see another artist give their advice on issues

[UrMom]

Gosh, I'm glad I can not relate to this, but I fully understand it. My mom was raised in a practically cultist religious environment and was discourages from doing anything outside of getting married and having children. She had a lot of talent and could have done a lot of ambitious stuff with her life. In a way I'm kind of grateful about that because her experience made her raise me with the freedom to figure out who, or what I wanted to be and believe.
It's funny, even people in my generation find the idea of raising your child with resources to figure themselves out to be a "dangerous" concept. But I find restricting resources and what a child can be, wear, believe to be damaging. How do you truly know what you want if you've only ever been given one option?

But I digress! I'm glad that my family is at least accepting of the things i do/want to do with my life. Most probably wouldn't if they knew exactly what I drew, but they don't need to know any of the details. Lol.

[nolongerusestheforum]

I find restricting resources and what a child can be, wear, believe to be damaging. How do you truly know what you want if you've only ever been given one option?

Agreed!

random words so I have at least 20 characters

[SirGutsalot]

My parents love me doing comics but when I told them I changed from comedy to horror... I basically lost their support...

[OgonoArtFamily]

hmm, I guess going through an experience of limitation made your mom value unlimitation more, I'm happy for that.
But yeah, parents, friends or any peers can be very dangerous to mental and emotional health when it comes exploring your talnets.

We hold such people to high standards and at any moment they shut us down or limit us by what they say. We start to believe and stop growing. I guess when someone masters inner inspiration nothing can stop us!

Out of curiosity, what do you draw? xD

[OgonoArtFamily]

Woah seriously? I feel as a content creator it's great to expand other genres to get a wider perspective on things.

Either way, no matter what people think or do.

Go full on warrior, a warrior that takes on an army of people that don't support you. But instead of combat, lead by example of following your heart's desire If you enjoy doing horror now. DO HORROR!

[69Michi]

It's quite funny because I am not even sure if they understand what exactly I'm doing. To my parents the only thing that matters is "Are you making money off of it?" If yes, good, you have my support as long as it's not illegal. If no, what are you doing with your life wasting your time on that stuff? Find something better to do, find a part time job, ANOTHER part time job. It's a close minded concept but at the same time :/ I don't think they meant anything bad. Before when I spend days drawing on computer, my family would ALWAYS complaint. But when I started taking commission and making money off of it, it turned "okay" to them. Pretty much the same with my comic right now. I /do/ make money off of it, and I'm pretty sure if I tell my parents, they would be totally supportive of it without even caring what sort of thing I'm drawing. (Unless it's pornographic, that is a different story)

[NickRowler]

My issue is less my parents supporting "art" and more to do with my parent's may not be too supportive of my subject matter.

I work on my comic but when my parents ask me what I do with my free time, I tell them "nothing". I would rather them think I am lazy then try to lecture me about my "sinful" comics.

[eleoza]

My family is a little odd ._. they support the idea that I'm making a comic, they ask me how it's doing A LOT and they even tell their friends about me making a comic. But.... they never asked to look at/read the comic.
That's odd right?

[redsblueyoungster]

Depends on the content of your comic whether you ACTUALLY want your family to look at it. I know my mom would be too squeamish to read horror stuff and would probably question heavily why I'm doing horror if I was interested in doing horror.

[UrMom]

My mom hated it, she said there was so much stuff she could have done but was pressured out of it. As a kid she was a good visual artist, photographer, dancer. Now it, along with her motivation is all gone. Seeing crap like that happen to children and vulnerable adults is always depressing. I know a lot of toxic people who are very keen on pushing their toxicity onto others, regardless of how obviously bad the outcome will be. I still can't get over how people just freak out at the suggestion of letting their child pick cloths and toys not assigned to their AAB gender. Told my coworker that and she looked at me like I was some hostile alien. Lmao!

Out of curiosity, what do you draw? xD

To be blunt. Nudity, LGBT+ friendly stuff, poc, porn. Basically everything super "white", super religious extremists don't like. If my family outside of my mom were to discover the things I drew I most likely wouldn't be able to take their reaction seriously. I'm pretty pig-headed.

[eleoza]

haha oh no, I'm quite happy they never asked to look at it. But for all they know it could be a comic for kids. That's the odd thing, they have no clue what I'm making a comic about yet they keep asking how it's doing and stuff xD

[edmourabarbosa]

Sometimes it's too easy to just say our parents don't understand or don't support us. The truth is way harder actually. Most of us here are young, some are even teenagers. It's impossible to understand what's like to raise a child, to be responsible to a life. Our parents CARE for us, they want us to be happy. Yes, sometimes that love translates into something that hurts us, but they have the best intentions.
My advice for any of you that are going through it is: get a real job. Earn enough to pay for your own food and stuff. Show them that you don't need them anymore, that you're a real adult. That should take off some of the stress they feel, therefore letting you live your life however you want.

[ronaldsardoma]

I am blessed that my family supports me in what I do. But my advice is that you just do what you love. It doesn't matter if their happy or not as long as you yourself know that you're happy in what you're doing.

[nolongerusestheforum]

That is TERRIBLE. I am really, really sorry to hear that.

[NickRowler]

I wish it was that easy for me.

I have a job and I don't live with my parents but I don't make enough to be financially independent. And it is growing quite common now of days to have working young adults who still live with their parents. I am also at the disadvantage that I have little to no face to face social interaction outside of my family, which I think my parents use as an emotional tether. And even if I was to become 100% independent, my parents are still going to be judgemental as hell (like how they act about my brothers).

[edmourabarbosa]

I understand. I live in a similar situation. I'm 27 years old, graduated as an engineer, have years of field experience. BUT... I'm working for my father's company. He's my boss. It sucks. I tried to move on, to work on other places. I even moved states. But, ultimately, family is family.
I said what I said because I know how hard it is. I simply gave up on trying to make them understand. It's useless. Your energy is spent better focusing on your art and how to make it work as a "real" job. I assure you that even after you start making money from it, they will still don't give a damn about it. They don't understand, they never will. So the best thing to do is move on. You can't right now? Suck it up and keep going. It's hard, but someday it will end.

[shazzbaa]

It depends I suppose, but I don't think this is necessarily odd! Some parents are really self-aware of the fact that their presence, as parents, might make a kid feel self-conscious -- basically, the idea that they wouldn't want to make you feel awkward if you didn't want to share it with them, or to make you feel bad if it wasn't something they enjoy, but they still want to be a part of your life enough to know how it's doing and how you're enjoying it.
Or, some parents are convinced that they just can't understand what The Kids Today are into -- like the grandparent who knows their grandkids love those Pokemans but haven't the foggiest clue what a pokemon is. There are lots of reasons a parent might hope their kid's hobby is doing well, but not try to get into it.

If you're happy that they never asked to see it, they might have honestly just made the right call in guessing that it would be weird for them to ask! I wouldn't worry too much about it. ;u;