There’s a huge tradeoff between making great art and living a happy, healthy life. Intense loneliness, misery and failure is a test. Either it breaks you and you give up. Or it drives you to dig deeper then ever before.
Success in life will most likely kill your inspiration and hunger. You will smile more. Feel like you belong.
People will respect and admire you. Depend on you. You made it. You are living your dream life. You got everything you wanted. Money. Energy. High vibes. Nice house. Beautiful family. Solid friends. You feel love, hope and empathy. You help those in need and make the world a better place.
But more and more, you will also start to become the person others expect you to be. All the obligations and responsibilities will take you away from your passion and slowly you will start to resent everything You will long for the days when you were a nobody. Broke and free. You miss that sense of possibility. uncertainty and danger. That feeling of fire and lazer focus, knowing that nothing would stop you or get in the way of your dream.
If you are a real artist you will burn it all to hell.
Start a new life somewhere. Rebirth. Revolution. Revelation. You won’t be happy but you will feel alive. Full of piss and vinegar. Spunk and venom.
If you want to be a good person, you will drop your mad artistic desires and prioritise the needs of the people you care about. Build your whole life around them. You cannot have both unless you want to live the life of mediocrity. Good luck proving me wrong.
To be an artist is to be a madman, laughing with the gods at the insanity of this fucking world. Art is all or nothing. The good life is the middle way.
There is no solution to this problem.
If you need one, you are playing the wrong game.