But I've had several workshop experiences that were just hellishly bad. If you can find the right workshop, with the right people, it can be bliss, but if the moderator or really any of the participants are bad, it becomes like purgatory.

And I like the feeling of getting encouragement, yes, but I didn't get near enough critique. So my advice is, make sure that you don't end up in a scam workshop where people are sucking your pockets dry and not providing any service other than cooing.

The LW should take a break from the creative life and go on a trip to the local Target, or Home Depot maybe. Listen to the conversations...glance at the faces. Take four or five hours. Think about what it all means. Does it mean anything?

As someone in a similar situation, I realized soon that one has to know rejection in order to appreciate acceptance. Humility is a gift.

Life is long, that's what I tell myself about this subject.

I also work as a freelancer. My work is close to the trappings of art (I pay the rent with illustration, animation, and other types of strategic, creative and production stuff like that). Every day, in my mind, I'm polishing the details of all the large non-work projects I'm planning (profound artistic masterpieces which will change the world of course). Most of the spare time I do find to draw I end up working endlessly on improving my anatomy knowledge... hoping to get faster so that I'll actually get some of these things done before I die. But my life is spent mostly catching up with deadlines and bringing home the bacon.

But I feel none of the LW's angst. Basically, who cares if you get a grant or get into a museum?? You do apparently, but why? That whole gallery world is just another industry with deadlines, driven by demand. Supplying them doesn't make you any more of artist.

Which brings me to my main point -- to me the term "artist" is not something one should apply to oneself (like "genius" or "pioneer"). The folks making money in the gallery world aint any better artists than us commercial hacks, they just say they are.

So if you've got a good satisfying career which provides the flexibility to periodically create what you want to create, why worry? I say rake in the cash, sock it away, and then retire relatively young to someplace cheap where you can do nothing but "art" forever!

Okay, I’m not going to be the only one to diss you, but I want to put some facts up front. I, too, am an artist. I’m good. But I work a barely-paying job that I detest in a field not related to my goals. I am struggling to make it in a big city that provides inspiration and acceptance for artists, but is also highly expensive. I have some good breaks. Friends who have made things easier for me, and given me an extraordinary deal on living arrangements. Encounters with people who have opened up new doors to me. I expect my situation to improve and to do well here. So while I'm a bit emotionally strained over conditions in my life, I can beyond that.

I cannot tell you how much I hate your letter and your whiny, complacent attitude. Aww, poor baby who has his own studio, makes enough to cover the expense of it, produces television shows and from his twenties was regularly placing articles and selling scripts.

Please take a reality check. Recognize your extreme luck. Recognize that you probably do have confidence in yourself as an artist, as you’ve constantly sold your writing and your visual art, and have had the confidence to show your work to “smart people, the people I’d hoped would like it, and they like it for the right reasons.”

I don’t begrudge you your success. I heavily begrudge you your selfish “Enough is not enough, I want more even though I’ve been visited with extreme good fortune” appeal. Read a bio of Van Gough sometime. Or Dostoevsky. You’re doing pretty well, and I mean that as much from an artistic standpoint as one of finanical security and career success. It sounds like you have time to devote to your art. In fact, it sounds like you make enough that you could chuck the television career and still have enough savings to keep you going.

I’ve resolved not to sling profanity at you for your unreasonable demands and silly angst. Or to insult your intelligence, maturity, or artistic sensibility for being so spoiled and ungrateful. I’m doing this to be nice.

But not for everyone. I, too, am an artist. Have been all my professional life and remain so in retirement. I try to emulate Kipling's cat "...who walked by himself, and all places were alike to him."

Rejection, acceptance...all places are alike.

I have nothing for the LW, just a request for Cary. Please list that literature you mentioned that has opened up skies and superior worlds. Not fair to tease like that!

Historically, most artists, whatever the medium, have never been able to support themselves by simply being artists. Look at the lives of Trollope and Charles Ives, just to name two who maintained workaday existences. I think Borges worked as a librarian well into his fifties, in spite of having had several of his stories published.

Do your job and make a living, and do your art, and allow the work to be its own justification. If, occasionally along the way, you receive external validation, that's gravy-- but nobody owes it to you.

Actually, all sarcasm aside, I suspect that your dissatisfaction with your life is probably heightened by your feeling entitled to being regarded as special. You can still believe in yourself and your work without thinking you're entitled to acclaim and the stereotypical life of an artist, and you just might find everyday life more bearable.