How dA Changed the Deviant

deviantART has changed my life. No, really. It has.  I've been here for six years, and every year that's gone by this site has become a more and more important part of who I am.  Let me start from the beginning.

2003 was in the middle of a particularly difficult part of my life. I wasn't exactly what I would call stable in any sense of the word. When I came to deviantART, it was because I wanted to read my friends' writings. They gave me their userpage URLs and the next day I toddled off to the public library (because I didn't have a computer at the time) to check it out. I checked it out, was interested and decided to join myself, even though I had only written one half-assed excuse for a short story. That one half-assed short story, however, spawned a burning desire in me to write, and write I did. You could  say that dA really sparked my creativity because every time I came here I was inspired. All that writing helped suck me out of the deep depression I was in, and posting it here gave me an opportunity to have someone read it without fear of being judged by those I had to deal with every day.

Eventually the well of writing in my soul dried up, but by the time it had I was hooked on interacting with the community and itching to try new things. Visual art was something I hadn't done since 9th grade art class, but I hankered to try it again. Problem was, I didn't have the resources. I didn't have a computer of my own, let alone an image editor and I knew I couldn't draw or paint traditionally. I'd already tried those and been horribly disappointed. So instead I browsed. I found that I loved photomanipulations more than I thought and wished desperately that I could try them.

2005 rolled around, circumstances changed and I found myself in possession of a copy of Photoshop. Inspired by all the beautiful things I had seen on dA, I laid my hand on my trackball, dug up some tutorials (from our very own Resources gallery, might I add), and started learning. Suddenly I had found a new passion. I was an artist. I had never considered myself as an artist until then.  I learned and worked, worked and learned. And every day I became more and more inspired by the art I saw in the community.  

2005 was also the year I got hooked on dAmn. It all started with a screenshot penrino posted of #Trivia. I've been a trivia junkie all my life, so this seemed like the perfect place for me. I couldn't have been more right. I got hooked on the game and started meeting some interesting folks. I was doing something I hadn't done in a long while: making friends.  I got involved with that little corner of the community and eventually became a mod with the Thumbshare team.  That's when I met one of my best friends, psivamp. She's awesomesauce if you weren't aware. Her artwork inspired me and she taught me sooo much about manips and Photoshop. And more important than that, she's been my shoulder to cry on and my girl to giggle with for the last 4 years.  Her fiance, animedevildog, is another of my best friends and I met him in #Trivia too. We used to play Uno all night long in #Uno (though the room is now defunct).  

In 2006, I was pregnant with my son and the love and affection I felt from all my deviant friends was a vital part of keeping my spirits up. Especially the love I got from my #Trivia friends.  They went through the whole pregnancy with me day by day and were supportive and excited when baby-havin' time rolled around. My deviant friends had become something more: my deviant family. Which would turn out to be something I needed more than I realized. After having my Li'l Man my world changed a lot, as is the way when you have children. I couldn't go out with my friends as much, couldn't just hop in the car and go out of town on a whim. And out of town is really the only place to go when you live in a tiny little rural town where you only know your spouse and your co-workers. So deviantART quickly became my social life. Not kidding. It was pretty much the only contact I had with other people outside of my job and my little family.

I got more and more involved in the community as time went by. I started joining clubs right and left, and eventually ended up helping run one or two. I also started branching out and trying to learn new art forms again. I tried my hand at stock photography towards the end of 2007 and discovered that I really enjoyed it. So I started doing more and more of it. And getting better at it. It brought me a ton of satisfaction to be able to kill two birds with one stone by giving back to the community that had given so much to me AND to be able to dress up in fun and/or silly outfits and prance around like a princess. As a direct result of my getting into stock photography, I kind of fell head-first into art photography. Desiring to shoot some stock of a cemetery I used to enjoy visiting, I took my camera out one day and what I came back with were some amazing shots that I was too damn proud of to allow them to be dissected.  So again came the learning and working process. You see a pattern developing here, yes?

But it's not just art that I've learned here. It's so much more. I've learned other skills, and definitely some virtues I might have been missing before. Patience, a greater acceptance of others, and even acceptance of myself. I've learned how to be myself here because I don't have to hide it. I don't have to worry about being judged for being "too smart" or "weird". I don't have to worry about people looking down on me for liking "dorky" things like Hello Kitty and zombies and robots. In fact, things like that are celebrated here more often than they are in the "outside world" and as a result of my time here, I've grown to celebrate them too.

To sum it all up, deviantART has changed my life by helping me find the artist within myself, by being a friend for the seemingly friendless, and by letting me learn how to be comfortable in my own skin. There's very little I wouldn't do for this community because it's done so much for me I don't think I could ever repay my debt to it.