My Little Pony Friendship is Magic - What I learned

Dear Princess Celestia, I didn't learn anything! Except how to not be irresponsible with money. Looking at saved brony commission art I have and recalling prices from memory only, I think I spent at least $1,100 on art commissions & packs. I don't have a well paying job so I shouldn't have spent that much money on mere picture files. I understand that art skill is rare and difficult to develop, which explains the price, but I'm just saying that the benefit of digital art pics might not be worth the costs, especially when piled up. I still enjoyed those pictures for seconds at a time when I got them. https://www.deviantart.com/foxinshadow/art/Let-s-Play-453637075 was probably the 2nd commission I've ever bought and it was worth the $65 price tag. FoxInShadow designed half of my OC. I'm honored! https://www.deviantart.com/koveliana/art/Fountain-Of-Dreams-596561087 is easily my 2nd favorite pic and it's simply really fucking good, $50. 1 night a friend and I were playing Smash Bros Melee and at the start of our break, I opened up DA to see if Koveliana finished my pic. I showed it to my friend and he was as oh-my-god as I was. I was ******* *** **** all night, metaphorically https://www.deviantart.com/foxinshadow/art/YT-banners-571809164 was a ?$90? mistake. I have really bad personal bias because I think everything I put on my channel is worth seeing. I wanted to add some personality to my funny Smash moment clips and my OC was already the mascot of my channel. So why not? Everyone uses wide screen monitors and Smash Melee only displays in full screen, so I thought I could use the spare space for some brony art. Holy shit, that was a fucking bad idea. The 2 fandoms have so little overlap. The art on the sides was... invasive? I don't even know art words to explain it! Regret. The best excuse I have is working full time at a stressful job + going to up to 3 Smash sessions/week + rendering everything in (up scaled) 1440p quality on a poverty laptop + maintaining a workout habit = not enough time to break mental inertia and look at myself from an outside perspective. But maybe I can be optimistic about it and see my sooner youtube/Smash career suicide as a good thing. Now I hate esports. I just think the fun isn't worth its costs anymore, especially watching it online. Why? It's the same game, the same players, the same characters, the same maps/stages over and over again and nothing ever changes. Maybe I needed a big mistake to teach me that. https://www.deviantart.com/foxinshadow/art/Smash-Bros-592095030 was used as channel art and it's good, $120 I also spent probably $500 on official merch and at least $800 on fan-made merch. I don't have any of either anymore, except for the body pillows. $2,400 spent on stuff I almost don't even use anymore. I can't be trusted to have my own money Maybe the best thing I got out of the fandom was using the brony Facebook clones. I've formed a lot of friendships there during my active time there and I'm even still online friends with 4 of them. I even met 1 of them in person and rekt him in Smash Melee for a few hours 1 night. Maybe 1 more could still be considered my friend, but we're starting to hate each other. Not many friendships last forever I eventually learned to hate social media too. It's a useless time drain. It's just a fest of talking to each other about nothing while doing nothing of value. But I guess it's a way to find online friends. Archiving my life's stories through blogs was fun. I have everything backed up on DA, but I don't think I'll ever be famous anymore. I don't think there's anything anyone will ever want to learn from me. There are so few sites I even use anymore and I've been slowly bleeding out of the internet. Life is more peaceful without it. Maybe I was addicted to the internet. When someone changes sides, they become the loudest advocates against their previous side I still enjoyed my time spent in the fandom (Ironically typed all of this on a brony FB clone) (I'm still repeating the same money spending addiction but with manga this time, AAAHHH!!!)