What kind of artist are you
To have told my 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old self that my artistic output wasn't the fundamental and most valuable aspect of my life, I would have thought you didn't understand. These days I don't feel that way. That's not to say that I've stopped working as much, but it just feels, self-evidently, that other stuff needs your attention. Like tending to the people around you. You're part of a larger community and part of the world. This is going to sound sad and extreme, but there's that description of Satan in Dante's "Inferno" trapped up to his waist in ice and self-absorbed in his own misery and waving his batlike wings and gnawing on his resentments with his three mouths.