Artery

So you're creative and you want to make a living from it?

Ignore the well-meaning waitress at Denny’s who tells you what to worry about in this big blue world.

Ignore your aunt and uncle who propose alternative career paths you should look into once the main dream expires.

Even ignore your fans when they start to pop up and when they ask for more of this and less of that.

Not because feedback is fundamentally bad… but rather, because art only works when it’s a dictatorship. 

How is it that your average 5-year-old can produce more compelling abstract drawings than your average art undergrad?

Because the 5-year-old has no interest in feedback. They are little dictators. They mash the crayon into the paper in the formations that please them, and then they let you decide whether it's worth throwing up on the refrigerator. . . but not the other way around. The little kid doesn't go to their parents and ask, ‘what advice do you have for me to produce refrigerator-worthy art pieces?’ NO. They mash the paper.

Now, I'm not arguing that you cannot politely receive feedback -- just that, initially, you shouldn’t listen to it. 

If feedback is truly pertinent, then it will haunt you across time and prove to you that it's valid.  Otherwise, it will stop itching and fade away like a small mosquito bite. 

But to yield to every little comment from every peanut in the gallery, will surely drive you mad. 

The tiger does not ask where it should bite into the gazelle’s neck, it just picks an artery and digs in.

Be like that.