Being an artist most of my life, i've come to the realization that there will always be artists out there better than me. That being said it doesn't really inspire me to improve (at least not right now). Having high expectations of myself with my art has taken its toll.
This has come up for me when I even remotely considered entering the Lighting Returns contest here on DA. Seeing all the entries in digital art (i'm mainly a traditional artist working with pencil, pen and ink, etc.) it put me out of even entering. Yes I understand the people submitting these entries have more likely more experience with digital art and I don't have much experience with it as i'm just introducing myself to digital art. I really wanted to enter this contest and traditional art holds nothing over all the digital art being submitted.
I guess to sum this up for as long as i've been drawing (10+ years) and being an artist i've taken a serious blow to my artist ego (yeah yeah say what ever you want on that I don't care).
[and this is what happens when I want to do art at about 1 to 2am and after work....I break down. *sigh* I'll feel better by tomorrow I guess. thanks to all who read this and I assure you i'm ok, this happens to me sometimes...again doing art late at night I usually avoid because well this can happen.]