Please be patient with me, I have an extremely hard time with self expression 
I am not good at like, observing a thing and putting my interpretation onto paper. I try a lot, but it never meets my (probably impossible) standards. This really started to frustrate me recently, so instead I started just drawing interesting shapes and filling them with patterns. The image attached to this post is an example of one.
But now I have these little sketches that look cool to me but feel unfinished. I don't know how to develop them any further. If I try, I feel like I ruin them.
And then it dawned on me: I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing. I've been trying out art as a fun hobby for the past 2 years. I read a couple of textbooks and took notes, I've filled a few sketchbooks, painted a little, and had a great time. But I can tell I'm still shit and I want to be good. How do I do that? I guess I have a few main questions:
-What should I spend my extremely limited practice time on?
-How can I incorporate the things I like about others' art into my own? Do I just straight up try to copy them?
-Some people I've asked irl have said it's just a matter of time. I haven't been creating long enough to be good yet. Is there any truth to this? Am I just impatient?
Here's some more of those weird sketches if you're interested. I can also post some more uh... grounded? art for comparison?
spoiler
As an art educator I think this thread has some generally great advice.
I would add further to exercise how you engage and analyze art into your workflow. Start basic, familiarizing yourself with the Elements of Art and the Principles of Design. Use these concepts to describe artwork you enjoy. Consciously try to make connections between the media and techniques and how those influence the work’s concept. Read history and what other people have said about the work and engage yourself in discussions. Visual art is a language in of itself. This is just as critical as the technical practice of art making.
Also line is simultaneously the most humble and humbling of the elements of art. I agree with mfed1122 that your line work is okay, by which I mean you have a great start. One thing I thinn you’re struggling with how your fingers, hand, wrist, and arm are articulating while drawing. I suggest practicing gestural drawing, perhaps even calligraphy, especially at scales different from your sketchbook. I really like recommending Sketch Like An Architect, which has tangible exercises you would benefit from greatly.
Is this the one you didn't see showing up?
Yeah
Seems good to me?
Huh… maybe something’s buggy with the app I use. Thanks anyway!
Which app? The website seems to be showing everything fine rn
Voyager. I’ve noticed it has some weirdness with how Lemmygrad and Hexbear communicate and maybe it’s exacerbated with Voyager. Like I’ve been locked out of comms on Hexbear before and have had posts/comments show up on Lemmygrad accounts but not Hexbear and vice versa. I don’t actually know any of that works. I’m assuming it’s some kinda magic.
Hmm, I know there was all that drama with some of the frontends doing instance level blocking because the creators don't like us. There's also the fact that hexbear is still on a fork of Lemmy, so some of the stuff won't work with us.