The real tea on being an artist is that every day you are your own boss and every day you feel like you might get fired. That is to say: nothing is given and nothing is taken for granted. There's a Buddhist story (a Zen koan, if you will) as recounted here (https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-tiger-and-the-strawberry-b73de1dccf19): "Once upon a time, as a man was walking through a forest, he saw a tiger peering out at him from the underbrush. As the man turned to run, he