Artists have it the worst. If you answer, “I’m a writer,” for example, there’s a very good chance that the next question will be, “Oh, have you published anything?” which is actually a veiled way of asking, “Do you make any money off that?”

Illustrator Karlotta Freier recalls being mocked by her art school classmates for asking about how to make a living as an illustrator. “No one would make fun of a plumbing student for asking about the business side of things,” she says, “so why don’t I get to ask?” For decades, the promise of a creative career was the alleviation of the worst parts

The only art the world gets to enjoy is from creators who’ve overcome these hurdles and released their work. Perhaps still greater artists existed than the ones we know, but they were never able to make this leap.

I had a friend who, for the longest time, talked about putting his artwork online and trying to make a go of it as a professional (or at least semiprofessional) artist. He talked about it for years; he saved up money; he even built a few different websites and uploaded his portfolio. But he never launched. There was always some reason: the resoluti