There’s a point when you realize
that the things you’re creating
are not so much because you feel you have to create them
but because you feel you have to create.
You feel responsible to art,
I mean,
and you simply are obliged
to repeat the actions you once perpetrated
with joy and abandon
but now perform in practiced perpetuity.

It’s not the worst thing.
Before you did it because you could.
You’d do it for free.
Now you do it because they ask.
You do it because they pay.
It’s what the world does to all of us
eventually
if you get good enough
at the things you love
or so I hear.

Not everyone has that luxury.