One challenge that upcoming artists face is that of figuring out whether or not they have genuine artistic talents. It is very easy to deceive yourself that you have genuine artistic talent while, in fact, you have no such talent. Every once in a while, you come across people who are guilty of this self-deception: people who have managed to convince themselves that they have genuine artistic talent, but whose artistic productions prove otherwise. This is the state of affairs that makes it necessary for everyone who is thinking of venturing into the artistic scene to first make some effort towards figuring out whether his or her artistic talent is genuine.
The only way in which you can figure out whether you have genuine artistic talent is by subjecting your artistic performance to critical review. Thus, it is not really upon you yourself to figure out whether or not your artistic talent is genuine. On the contrary, you have to leave it to others to tell you whether or not your artistic talent is genuine.
One approach that you can use, while trying to figure out whether your artistic talent is genuine is to make a recording, and then put it somewhere (like on YouTube) where it can be accessed by a critical mass of people. Then all you’d have to do is to watch the reviews and comments that people make about your work, in order to figure out whether or not your artistic talent is genuine. Of course, you should expect to come across some negative comments, even if your work is very good. On the other extreme, you should expect to come across some rather positive comments, even if your work is hogwash. But what you need to be looking at is the trend: like if most people seem to genuinely like your work, you may come to the conclusion that your artistic talent is genuine.
If it emerges that your artistic talent is not genuine, that shouldn’t be the end of the world for you. There are lots of other alternative things you can do. You can, for instance, opt to look for a conventional job. It shouldn’t be too hard for you to get work at a company such as UPS (thus becoming one of the Upsers). The work you get at the company may actually be in the UPS tracking department. Or you could end up being deployed somewhere else, like in the parcel handling departments. Wherever you are put, you may actually end up enjoying the conventional work more than you’d have enjoyed being an artist.