Thank you for another insightful episode. I'm going to comment in the midlife crisis theme as I am very much going through it. I'm actually a bit older than the mentioned artists.
I did major from an arts school in my country (BFA) in the late 90s, but the fear of a financially unstable future plus the arrival of the Internet (and me having a hand with computers) put me on the track of web design and development — one where I stayed for the better part of the next 2 decades.
Now here in 2022 after being laid off fairly recently and realizing I had enough savings to get by for a while, I decided to go all in into pursuing my long-neglected dream of being an author-illustrator-middle grade comics artist, as I feel the life clock ticking. Enrolled on some online courses, have been gathering info on the US publishing market and what it takes to be seriously considered, got Will Terry's book
, have learned a bit of 3D modeling, and I am currently assembling pitch packages for several forthcoming publishing pitch events and to a major comics festival in France I'm attending next year. Go big or go home they say...
And yet, there is this feeling that I'm pretending to make up for lost time, the realization that I still have a lot of shortcomings to address in regards to my art, and the urge to be a "jack of all trades" to get a job as soon as possible. Have I had the "luxury" of living off my art since I was young, maybe I would already have been a competent, super skilled professional (as in: being consistently and fairly paid for your art) but alas, that's yet to happen, and that's where my uncertainty likely stems from. If I need to go back to my old jobs, then so be it... but not without fighting tooth and nail for this beforehand.