I once said that first and foremost, how you see your artwork is what matters the most. 
I stand by those comments to this day and it really is what matters the most. Insecurity within your own artwork plagues many people. In this day and age of instant gratification with facebook, flickr, DA, 500px, everyone wants a pat on the back and ages ago on DA I wrote several journals about this about how deep down, it's all just meaningless BS. The drive by ego stroking doesn't help you evolve as an artist at all and if anything it can actually make things worse. How so? The answer is a relatively simple one really. People begin to base their self worth as an artist by how much something a piece of art is commented on, by how many favs it has, how many pageviews, how many shares. This is also a relatively new phenomenon. Case in point, if this was 15 years ago, none of us would even be having this conversation right now because the expectations we put on things simply doesn't exist as a m