YAY!!! WOOOHOOO!!! I finally got over 10,000 pageviews! sweeet! Thanks watchers and all those who enjoy my art and site. ^_^

Ok...so I noticed an issue with comparing myself recently to others without knowing it until now. I've already learned to not compare my skills to others but sometimes I fall into it once in a while. But the question is why should we not compare ourselves to others? So then I happened to come across something I read on a website [link]
It does talk about musicians but anyone can relate to it, even those artists out there. Just think of the music as your artwork and the musician as the artist. This is what it says:

"Another caution is that musicians absolutely MUST NOT fall into comparison. It is absolute poison. You must not compare your abilities with those of another. Whether a person is better or worse than you in a talent, there is no room for any degree of competition in the world of a true artist. That is not to say that we should not learn from others. We should listen to as much music as possible and try to adopt the good things that we find, but we cannot think less of our own music because someone else’s music has more skill or more emotion.
It is true that another person has a better ability to learn to play, write music, and they may demonstrate remarkable skill. Ought we to wonder about that? What if some of today’s great musicians had gotten discouraged by comparing themselves to Beethoven or any other great artist?
There will always be someone better than you, and there will always be someone worse (even if you can’t seem to find one!).
It helps to consider the place of music in our lives. Is one good piece of music truly better than another? If so, by what standard are they measured? If you measure by pure skill, you won’t notice the feeling of the music. If you measure by the amount of effort put into an individual piece, then you won’t notice how much time and effort the musician put into developing his or her ability to write music. If you measure by the rules of music theory, you won’t notice the development of new ideas and new styles in modern music.
Measuring how “good” a song is compared to another is fruitless, since every piece has a different meaning, a different motive, and a different feel.
It is the same with the musicians themselves. Two musicians have such different experience and motivations that it simply doesn’t work to compare them.
Do not be discouraged or boastful by comparing your ability to another persons. It will only lead you away from becoming better at what you do."

This is something that is inspiring to me and helpful to my own self-confidence. I hope those who read this as well, will feel the same and find that you are only competing against yourself.