Doing what you love when the money won’t follow
loveofallwisdom.com
loveofallwisdom.com
I know too many people (some very close to me) that followed this mantra. What ensued was most often very low paying jobs, or long term unemployment. The "luckiest" ones were able to do a career switch later in life. But there is an opportunity cost, as well as great time and effort involved on starting from scratch at that point.
Much greater advice is "do something that affords the lifestyle you want to have". This formula will be different for each one and will be a tension between work, money, and personal life. I know people who work jobs they don't love or hate, but pay enough to sustain their living expenses and support their hobbies.
So because I didn't do what I loved while I was young, I've kind of missed the train. I might be able to later in life, but I will have to wait quite a while.
Absolutely. And this goes hand in hand with downregulating your lifestyle expectations.
I'm now a software developer and my job isn't as exciting as teaching and nowhere near as social. But it's affording me the life I want both freedom wise and money wise.
I don't think of my job as needing to be the thing I love for 8 hours a day. It's a thing I do for 8 hours a day that I like that then gives me a stress free 16 hours a day afterwards. It's a holistic thing.
They had a minimum wage in a technical legalistic sense, but financial success was guaranteed in practice. Risk taking is safe if you're not able to fail.
Nobody lives in that kind of paradise now. Was all squandered.
If the "Do what you love" parents crash and burn, they tell their children to "Focus on career." If the "Focus on career" parents succeed, they tell their children to "Do what you love."
Both sets of grandparents were blue collar (steel milling/odd-jobs and coal mining/nursing). My parents were the first generation to attend college at all and both became public school teachers. Both sets of grandparents had a sizable (very large for a hobby) home garden to supplement the family food and made use of it. I remember eating "government cheese" (literal cheese from the government) at times. They were not substantially better or worse off than the other working-class families we saw around us and hung out with.
Their pensions did ensure that they were able to not be in danger of starving in retirement, but they weren't traveling anywhere by airplane (I think maybe ever for one set and exactly once for the other) and, at the end, their estate was settled for an amount of money that one person could easily carry.
Is that "pretty decent financially"? I genuinely don't know; it was surviving.
To refine things a bit more, it seems like if you got a degree and had a white collar job you were probably going to do decently. Nowadays degree + white collar job is basically baseline.
My parents are Gen X with degrees (Eng + Chemistry?) and they seem to have enjoyed their 20s and early 30s, settled down in their 30s and ended up pretty well off without ever really worrying about money.
I don't think that strategy would work very well today. The world seems a lot more competitive now than it was 20 years ago, and on average it seems like there are less serendipitous opportunities.
1970: 11.0%
1975: 13.9%
1980: 17.0%
1985: 19.4%
1990: 21.3%
1995: 23.0%
2000: 25.6%
2005: 27.7%
2010: 29.9%
2015: 32.5%
2021: 37.9%
Roughly speaking, your parents' degrees are about twice as uncommon in 1993 (~midpoint of Gen X undergrad graduation) as they would be today.
* - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_104.10.a...
** - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio...
US population in millions per birth year (alive today) by generation*:
Boomer - 3.7M / yr (70.23M / 19) alive; 4.5M / yr (85.4 / 19) originally born **
Gen X - 4.4M / yr (65.8M / 15) alive
Millenial - 4.8M / yr (72.19M / 15) alive
Gen Z - 4.3M / yr (68.6M / 16) alive
That probably depends on where they were and what "end" of GenX they were. The early part of GenX was entering the workforce in a pretty nasty recession with high unemployment, high inflation and limited prospects (hence Grunge hehe). The boomers (although probably not those in America to be fair) went through periods like this too.
GenZ is experiencing high(ish) inflation and high(ish) interest rates now, but unemployment is still low and wages are still good. It can get much worse, and has done before. Generally though the bad times are shorter than the good times - hopefully that keeps holding true.
He puttered around with not-quite-successful-but-not-quite-failure blue collar sole-proprietor small businesses for most of his 20s, then got a low-level railroad job, worked his way up and spent his last ~15 years in middle management there before being forced into early retirement. Recall, just a high school diploma. He couldn't handle middle-school math (by more recent standards) when I was learning it, and could barely use a computer. But he could run a train yard. Go figure.
My mom quit work when they married in her late 20s, and never worked again. She had a junior college degree and just made enough to get by before that. Lived in a trailer when she was single.
They retired very well and paid my way through college in the early '00s. We never wanted for money at all when I was a kid—which is how they were able to drop four figures on a first computer (good ol' Tandy) for me, just in case that led to something. A big week-and-change road trip every year, sometimes flights instead, plenty of time off and travel around the holidays. We lived in some pretty damn nice houses (at times—there's only so much available when the railroad moves you to some podunk town and you want to buy on short notice).
On one income. In a pretty mundane, middling-pay career.
Union pensions and 20th century union health plans were magical. As were housing costs.
And it definitely seems like every 20 year old has an incredibly fulfilling and well rounded life if you only look at Instagram.
I also elaborated in another reply.
People who work hard downplay how hard they work. People who got lucky play up how hard they work. Objective data points to lifestyles being mostly the same now and 50 years ago.
So, doing something that makes you happy, makes you happy now. It's obvious really.
No, not hedonistic swill. Just do a job or effort that is fulfilling today. They don't all fail, they can be useful whether you make a fortune or not.
Focusing on yourself is a trap. While not ignoring your own needs instead focusing on the happiness of others (e.g. direct joy, relieving suffering, solving problems etc) is the greatest promotion of happiness in everyone including yourself while also having the meaning that will get you through the inevitable troughs.
> And so, the advice I would give to young people is this: structure your life so that you have the time and money to do what you love. That’s not easy to do by any means, but it is a much more realistic goal.
I often tell people that when I first entered the tech industry many moons ago, I wasn't chasing the money. I simply loved working with computers. And it just so happens that working in tech is lucrative. But I do wonder, fast forward 15 years later, if I would've stuck around if the field wasn't as booming.
I wonder if I tricked myself into believing that working in tech is really my passion ...
Woke: “get a lucrative career and find time to do your passions on the side”
Bespoke: “find a lucrative profession and gaslight yourself into thinking you loved it all along”
I know what I liked originally about computers was gaming, modding, hacking, and building them. I didn’t have a huge interest in programming and I definitely didn’t have an interest in having shitty managers. Yet here I am - big head SV engineer.
instead of "do what you love and the money will follow," find something lucrative and learn to love it.
Though I think in most cases that might be difficult/impossible, maybe you just got lucky
I've nerded-out on the majority of the projects I've worked on through my career - especially in the latter years. But there are quite a few projects in the past that would not have come to completion without a big fat carrot to keep my belly full and my favorite bartenders' rent paid.
Some weeks - no matter how interesting the problem is - I couldn't possibly care. The money remains a great fallback motivator; And unfortunately, often can end up being a shackle to a project that's well past its sell-by date.
I find it very fortunate that others are willing to pay handsomely to be able to specify the puzzles that I work on. Win-win.
I am still passionate about writing software, but the software I like to write doesn't pay the bills. It's avocational. The tech industry afforded my family the lifestyle I desire, but it didn't really ignite my passion, it was just lucrative.
I've since shifted into management. I'm finding new fulfillment in creating the kinds of teams I wish I had as an IC, that lets individuals work in ways they find fulfilling.
I went down the music path but the money was awful. It taught me how to apply myself to different projects, and I don't love tech as much as I love music, but it allows me to have the freedom to do other things, which I also love.
Talking about poets, it's interesting that there's not many full-time poets in the world; most poets need a paying job (often in academia) to cover the bills. I personally think this is a Good Thing as it helps give them (us) a perspective beyond the poetry scene, and the blank page, which helps ferment more enjoyable poems.
[1] - A couple of weeks after starting my first full-time job I discovered I genuinely detest paid employment. For me, the day job really is just a way to fund the rest of my life where all the fun stuff happens.
Of course, while the men were out having an avocation, the mothers stayed home with the kids. Now, some sharing of those duties needs to happen. But it is really important.
Why don't they release poems like songs? In South Asia, there are poetry concerts and it is a hit with the older generation who were exposed to more poetry before movie songs became mainstream.
It just so happens that our culture over-values things that are not aligned with contributing to a better society right now. Someone identifying as a musician will get more accolades from one's peers than a plumber and therefore feel that their passion is in the music.
We require a culture shift wherein we start to see, in a deep way, the value in the hard work of trying to make things better in the small, humble ways we are able to do ourselves. It is our values that are at fault.
Maybe this new generative AI will help us re-align our values by showing that art regurgitation is not a defining characteristic of what makes us human and therefore virtuous. Maybe what makes us human are the smart applications of insight in ways that improve the lives of those around us.
"Things musicians would never say"
If you're a good plumber, you'll get a ton of genuine ones from people whose dire problems you've solved.
I had a doctor once who said he sold his house to a plumber, who was trading up.
Most people make music for internal gratification.
Identifying as a musician won’t get you accolades. Playing music that people enjoy will.
A smart insight is that music improves people’s lives even under materially poor conditions. This is why for example, black slaves in America originated many of the most beloved musical styles.
As an industry, video games suck, for a developer. No life-work balance, sudden firings, etc.
Went for a web development instead. I program games as a hobby, and have some open source libraries out. A family, a house, interesting challenges. I sometimes wonder, yes. I hug my son and see what I have built so far.
* inspect.lua [1] is the most popular one. It transforms any Lua value (including deeply nested tables) into human-readable strings. It is very useful for debugging all kinds of Lua projects, not just games. It is a partial reason why I got my current web dev job at Kong.
* middleclass [2] is somewhat popular amongst people coming into Lua from OOP languages. I don't use it myself anymore and consider it a bit of a "clutch". Still, it has helped a lot of people.
* bump.lua [3] is a box-based collision detection and resolution library. The later part has some known bugs I never figured out. Still has been used by some people to do some fun stuff.
* gamera.lua [4] is a minimalist camera-system for LÖVE.
* anim8 [5] is an animation library for LÖVE
There's many other projects on my github profile. I must warn you that they are all in several degrees of disrepair, I pretty much abandoned all of my open source efforts when my first child was born. Ran out of free time and energy.
These days, when I want to scratch my game-making itch, I fire up PICO-8, an even more minimalistic gamedev environment than LÖVE. I find the limitations it imposes refreshing. It also means that I cannot use most of my old libraries. Which is fine.
[1] https://github.com/kikito/inspect.lua
[2] https://github.com/kikito/middleclass
[3] https://github.com/kikito/bump.lua
Thankfully stepping out of the tech industry has given meaning to what I do. I now do what I love but for something meaningful - coding for my own projects, be they good, bad or indifferent, for me they are meaningful.
An no the money does not follow but I can make others smile and occasional happy with what I do.
I accept that I have to make the money last and sized down: no more fancy restaurants nor expensive electric toys; instead more supermarket queues and eating at home. But life is no longer the rinse and repeat of a 9to5 office job.
> Rarely does a life leave time or energy for child-rearing, a paid job and a fulfilling avocation.
I could not imagine living a world where this becomes the norm. The norm should be "It's rare for a person to have a shitty job, a mortgage, student debt to pay off and no financial possibility to have children until they are 65".
> I could not imagine living a world where this becomes the norm. The norm should be "It's rare for a person to have a shitty job, a mortgage, student debt to pay off and no financial possibility to have children until they are 65".
This is the world you’re living in right now, it just sounds like you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t see it. For every worker who can sit home and code, there are at least hundreds of people doing menial jobs like harvesting crops, packing shipments, drilling for oil, fixing streets, etc. Most would probably describe those as “shitty jobs”, and sadly those jobs barely pay the rent.
Out of all the jobs you listed, drilling for oil is the one that does not fit the bill, not by a long shot. In fact, in this market, it's by far the most lucrative you could have.
Is this not already the norm? “Norm” as in, most people in developed nations already experience this?
* What you love
* What you are good at
* What pays well
* What the world needs
In that I think Ikigai acts as a method for fumbling towards the higher bits of Maslow's hierarchy to self-actualization. [1]
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
This also left time to learn piano, singing, and to visit 26 countries. If I'd done those things full time and waited for the money to follow, I'd still be waiting. Now I'm retired and writing, and definitely not expecting a lot of money to follow. (Some, anyway! I just got my year-to-date statement from Amazon.)
I'm not a religious person, but I always think of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden, and told:
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
(good thing I looked this up. I would have said "by the sweat of thy brow")
We have to work. That's the human condition.
“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact.“
In the TV/movie days, the dream of being a star was also there for many, but it was also so obviously out of reach that only the most daring and talented even attempted it.
The difference with your generation is that everyone grew up with a movie studio in their pocket, and watching YouTube makes everyone think that being a star is a real possibility. For some it will work out, and talent may be discovered that otherwise wouldn’t have been, but that vast majority will have to come to terms with the cold really that work is actually work, same as everyone else.
It is possible to find something you like that also pays well (most tech people here probably got here that way), but it does mean that you need to do the “hard things” early in life. Figuring out how Linux or Rust works is far less fun at the beginning, and you need to make a real effort to pull away from social media and video games to focus on things like that. I suspect it’s much harder today than it was 15 years ago.
He may well find it satisfying and/or enjoyable. But it appears to be some kind of severe workaholism he has, and I'd speculate there is a 50% chance football owns him, not the other way around. It would be fun to be him for just one Sunday though right???
The common view we have of teenagers, as devoid of any agency, vastly underestimates them, not only that, it excludes them for the "res publica": the participation to the public life, exclusion that emerges then as lack of maturity. All the acting out and "teenage angst", it is my opinion, is actually a call for responsibility and participation, and it is by this participation, and the subsequent confrontation with the messy reality of life that make you realize your limitation and allows you to grow out of your childish dream if they are, indeed, childing. This dampening of expectations is not a negative thing: it's what has allowed civilization to go on: almost nobody wanted to be a farmer. Keeping the door open for the odd wind of luck while living a pragmatic, if not as colorful as one's fantasies, life is the more realistic and healthy way of organize one future while the "think about this later" is a recipe for regret and depression caused by the mismatch between what it is and what I wished it were.
Or whether you have to have health insurance. If having health insurance wasn't tied to employment, just think of the opportunities that could open up.
You can do something you don't care for without making it your life.
"I have to wonder then whether, over many eons, we've evolved the risk appetite required to explore options - i.e. in exploration of new food sources. However, while I would argue that such risk appetite is a superior trait for populations, it may be of net negative value for any particular individual singled out of a population. Because, while a roaring success may benefit that individual as well as the population around him, say, if (s)he found a new food source and also could control its public distribution for his/her benefit, it could also turn out that the exploration fails, and the individual perishes from exposure to whatever risky environment in which he placed himself in the first place. So, extrapolated over many generations of natural selection, this successively repeated scenario would breed individuals into risky-options-seeking automatons, who don't necessarily do so on the net likelihood of their own benefit. In a large population of such risky-options-seekers, some would inevitably succeed, improving the lot of the population, but those that failed would be crossed off the natural selection list, even though the same traits were being exercised in survivors and non-survivors alike.
So when it comes to the value of risky-options on the individual basis, I would argue that the jury's still out, and that economic conservatism may be the individual's value maximizing choice after all . . ."
https://walkabout165.blogspot.com/2010/05/its-all-optional.h... (There's context provided in the post).
I probably have some interim updated thoughts about this twelve years on, but nothing conclusive.
There is value in being granted the freedom to fail, and even smart risks require a chance of failure; that's why banks and investors exist as they do. The difference is that a teenage individual is far worse at analyzing risk and the consequences of failure while having almost absolute authority over their own direction.
http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018...
(and a HN thread on that article form a bit ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209541 )
Go to any un-juried street art fair, and see all the mediocre art being offered by people with no outstanding talent. They probably love making their art, and not only would they do it without getting paid, they actually are doing it without getting paid.
I did follow that book for the last 5-10 years of my career and can say, I did double my salary and have now a life where I can easily afford big holidays, not worry about any car or health issues/breakdowns and put money on the side. But deep down I truly regret not turning my career in the middle to something closer to what I wanted to do. Today I have some small regrets not having followed a bit more the "passion"-things mid-career or trying to combine them and not always focus on money and climbing the ladder... One better advice is: If you want a satisfying career, ask yourself: What activities do I keep returning to, even though they are challenging?
(check this HBR article: https://hbr.org/2020/11/what-you-should-follow-instead-of-yo...)
It's hard to get really skilled at something if you're not passionate about it.
Failure.
Utter, complete, soul-crushing, devastating failure. Not just in one thing. I'm talking a 20 year death march finally ending in burnout in 2019 just before the pandemic. My experience has been that the more mindless the work, the more psychologically taxing it is for creative types like pretty much everyone on this site. Opportunity cost becomes all-consuming.
My regret is the opposite of yours. I wish I had gone and worked for a major corporation for a few years and saved up a few hundred grand so I could get out from under obligation and invent the things that I was born to build.
I wish I had lived in a van and avoided expenses and helped with communal projects in a makerspace.
I wish I had worked on any personal project at all of my choosing, instead of letting others dictate which personal projects had merit and coopting my motivation.
My spirit has been so utterly shattered so many times, that I no longer hold strong beliefs or expectations. I've toiled under such a level of negative reinforcement for so many years that I no longer trust my own instincts. I don't believe that the future will necessarily get better, that the past even existed, or that (as the article said) money comes from doing the things we love.
But you know what? I feel alive for the first time since I was maybe 5 years old. Watching the world work through some of the existential crises that I've faced since the 90s has been very healing for me.
I have no great words of wisdom to impart. But I do feel a calling to find peace. In my own life, I've been practicing service to others, who are an aspect of myself under reincarnation and the multiverse (quantum immortality, etc). Which looks like setting boundaries and communicating intentions even if I can't meet them at that time. It means basic kindness to everyone I meet, even finding ways to love them no matter how much I disagree with them. And giving them the dignity to succeed and fail and learn in their own way.
I guess what I'm saying is that I've largely abandoned logic, because I've experienced what it's like to try as hard as I can but have it end in tragedy. Bad things still happen no matter how much we try to prevent them. But good things also happen when we aren't expecting them, through the infinite power of serendipity (one of the forces that created the universe). So I've shifted to magical thinking (faith, hope, love, meditation/prayer, manifestation, etc) and have witnessed how reality has shifted to reflect my inner world (as above, so below). Now I walk in wonder as the world solves nearly every problem I wanted to solve, but without my ego's attachment.
Next steps for me are to keep applying small moves to shift laterally into neighboring realities along this timeline. This is an embrace of the free will that science claims doesn't exist. It's seeking meaning through art and culture as our system of necessity works tirelessly to obliterate it. That's how and why I'm working towards the rejection of economic systems, since they're based on constructs like artificial scarcity and denial that wealth creates poverty for someone else through ignorance of karma. Loosely, that looks like being as vegetarian as possible, while still providing for the nutritional needs of my body when warranted. It looks like acknowledging my inner monologue but recognizing that it's not my consciousness, and heeding my subconscious by being an audience for my dreams. And showing up, even on days when I start from a place of zero energy, which is all too often in these times.
I wouldn't trade the pain I've experienced, since it resulted in my conscious awakening. Being here now is priceless.
If this all sounds like gobbledegook, and maybe it is, then you the reader have the priceless gift of youthful thinking on your side. Run with that and don't get dragged down by rantings from old burnouts like me. Your achievements remind me that anything is possible, even when I'm my own worst critic and limit myself with labels like I just did. Everyone has to find their own way.
For a while when people ask me what I do I told them "I'm a failure." Which got some interestingly hostile responses much of the time, so I've stopped doing it. I think those are just other people on the same path but don't want to admit it yet.
I'm fortunate, in that I was able to save up enough of a modest nest egg, so that it doesn't matter.
I have skills that could make a lot of money. The problem is the way that the folks that pay me, treat me, and my work.
People seem to take the fact that they pay money, to be carte blanche to treat the people they pay, like garbage.
When I was younger, I could eat that s**t, but as I got older, I got crankier.
Nowadays, I do very good work, for free, for folks that couldn't afford me. They can be a pain, but I can also walk away (or threaten to), and we can usually work through the rough bits.
That's just as true when they're paying you.
It's not as easy to walk away. I consider it a matter of Integrity.
But I still strive to Do The Right Thing, even if I am not legally required to.
I’m aware that it is considered a “quaint anachronism,” but there you have it…
2) Now you can do what you want.
For the average Joe this means that we'll be spending a lot of time outside of work working on 1). There is no other way for those of us from non-rich families: we have to wisely sacrifice free time and convert that free time into a non-linear $$$ return in the most practical way possible.
The idea that Google is doing some awful thing is cynical. Even if you dislike ads, Google Cloud is infra for developers and applications to help businesses/people do work. All good stuff.
But exactly zero of my half dozen or so friends at Google or Facebook jobs are meaningful. They enable the machines.
> What if ads are just a way to help small businesses reach customers?
I see this argument all the time online. But never in person. I don't think people say it in person because they know they don't truly believe it justifies the rest of the stuff.
It's unlikely to be a good assumption - that what people say in person is what they really think and what they say from behind a fake name isn't. There are a number of things people truly believe and don't say in person because of the expected negative reaction. I use my real name online and I'm careful of what I say. You seem to have created a fake name an hour ago to say something that you probably believe, but don't want to risk offending someone - it's a rational thing to do.
I'd love to teach again - but sadly that would mean going back to a one bedroom apartment in a not-great part of town. Where I'm at now, I have a nice place in the country and the means to pursue hobbies that I couldn't before.
This may be correct but I feel like there’s an incorrect assumption that producing economic value leads to receiving economic compensation. The amount you’re paid for your output doesn’t directly correlate to the amount of output, it correlates to how well you can hold that output hostage in exchange for money.
A professional open-source developer on a major project like flask almost certainly produces way more value than a Google Junior engineer but still probably doesn’t get paid as much.
I’d say the same goes for many guitarists
As a religious person I have wondered where this computing curiosity or desires of my heart came from. God or myself?
Either way, I had no sense of loving computers in the beginning. I just wondered if I could add a bigger hard drive or how to make a website .
The lack of curiosity I have witnessed down through the years has often surprised me.
I think part of the problem is that "what you love" is too coarse of a term; the author hinted at this but didn't really dig into it. I would break it down into at least three parts:
1. Something that's fun to you (the moment to moment lights up your brain)
2. Something that gives you esteem (feeling like you're good at something, and probably also having others validate that with praise and/or payment)
3. Something that gives you a sense of purpose in life (like you're contributing to something bigger than yourself- can be artistically, socially, etc)
Combining those with:
4. Something that makes you money
we have four different needs that can be met by the same or different activities. Finding three in a single activity is hard; finding all four in a single activity is nearly impossible. But one or two here, one or two there, is very doable (assuming time allows). I tend to think a person should aim for a primary job that fills two, or maybe three, because of how much of their time it takes up. But they should not hold out for a job that fills all four.
What's important is to become aware of exactly what each of these needs looks like for you personally, and which activities do and don't fill each of them. Then you can plan and prioritize to try and fill the gaps in your life.
PS: I've found that #3 tends to revolve around people other than yourself. That could mean moving them or bringing them joy through art/creativity, or raising children, being a community leader, doing charity, or even just building a product that directly makes people's lives better. The specifics depend on the person. But totally insular activities probably won't ever do it for #3; I think we've got something at the base of our monkey-brains that has an unchangeable need to be helpful to the tribe.
Most of us can make smarter decisions, get more sleep, be more efficient doing both what we don't want to do and do want to do. This is self-development. Without it, your productivity will be too low to make much money. Many of the best opportunities to be self-directed (which is a lot of what people "love") are in small business, where marketing dominates.
But it is possible to love being an accountant, a janitor, and then some, if you're permitted to treat that job as something meaningful rather than hateful. We've been taught to be angry that we aren't living out some fantasy and hate everything around us.
Go ahead, call me gullible...
If you can spend 20 hours per week doing the thing you love, year after year, you're doing well.
Now I do what I want.
Some people want to spend their 20s doing what they want. I didn't feel I had that luxury. I didn't feel that I could just "not have a boss" straight away.
There are more Aerospace Engineers that want to build the greatest latest rockets than there are positions so they have to settle for lower pay.
And working on planes is a lot of contract work so the job situation isn't ideal.
Picking a boring field is definitely a path to job stability.
do what you love and make money from those skills you get on the roadthe other aspect that must be acknowledged (if not encouraged) not outright avoided is the idea of sacrificing yourself for the art. a bit like a suicide bomber. being an artist isnt about having a middle class income and lifestyle so you dont 'die penniless'...there is something more mystical that only an artist can bring to life for themselves and others.