Have a great weekend!
1- I think that it is important to believe in yourself and what you do. Especially if there are few or no one else who believes it. It doesn't matter if you want to a doctor, athlete, musician...or to move to another country.Many people will likely tell you that you will fail. Sometimes they will be right, sometimes wrong. But if you yourself believe that you will fail it becomes guaranteed.
3- For years I believed that eventually I will be able to get at least minimum wage from making art. Now I feel like I am out of ideas. Not for creating but from trying to sell. I feel tired from it. In the past I tried to had approach like Edison(Edison, how did you not get discouraged after failing more than 1,000 times?” to which Edison replied, “I have not failed even once, I have only discovered 1,000 ways that do not light a light bulb.”). But now I am no longer so sure of that. It seems that the world no longer needs/ wants art. Not just my art but also art in general. On facebok I see artists post works they made years ago. Asking less and less...but people are still not buying it. That is both sad and very depressing. As for my art I still love creating things. But trying to sell what I create disappoints me nearly every time and brings me a lot of emotional pain and lost nerves. So I think that I am at the point there I need a break from trying to sell pieces so I could perhaps recharge my optimism. Even my current piece is partly about this- duality of joy of creation and pain/ despair of trying to sell. I can't see myself ever stopping creating. Because it brings me joy/ fulfilment and meaning. But at the moment it doesn't seem that I will reach that stable minimum wage from selling art any time soon. So for some time I will just make art for myself without any hopes of selling it. There are still some empty walls here. So I may as well hang a piece or a few on those walls.
Interesting responses. Maybe you should write a post.