Artists aren’t supposed to live inside their comfort zones. They aren’t supposed to settle for the mundane. They aren’t supposed to get into a reliable routine.

The whole point of choosing to follow an artistic path is to stretch and flex your ability to step outside the realm of comfort and what is expected of you. You’re supposed to redefine the way you live, work, and create. You’re supposed to lead an uncomfortable life. 

Creating art, in and of itself, is an uncomfortable act. You have to be vulnerable enough to spill your heart onto paper. You have to face harsh realities. You have to reflect on your past. You have to accept your present. You have to deal with intense, complicated emotions. Creativity is about honesty, which means you are going to have to take a long hard look at yourself in order to create the best art possible.

Putting your work out in the open for an audience to judge is uncomfortable. You’re wearing your heart on your sleeve and hoping other people will appreciate your work instead of criticizing your work. When you choose to be an artist, you are essentially choosing to put yourself on display. You are choosing to express your own vulnerability in front of a crowd. You are giving hundreds, thousands, millions of people the opportunity to judge you over the internet and in real life.

Dealing with the unreliable nature of your muse is uncomfortable. There are going to be days when you cannot bring yourself to create. There are going to be days when you consider yourself a hack. There are going to be days when you wonder whether your greatest creations are behind you, whether you have what it takes to keep spitting out ideas. As an artist, you’re going to have constant insecurities. No matter how many people congratulate you on your work, you’re always going to feel uncomfortably average.

Choosing to follow your passion instead of following a traditional route with a steady, reliable paycheck is uncomfortable. There are going to be times when you struggle to find clients. There are going to be times when you struggle to scrounge together enough money for rent. There are going to be times when you worry about when you’re going to get paid again. You’ll never be able to guess how much money you’re going to bring in ahead of time, which is immensely uncomfortable.

Failures are uncomfortable. And there are a lot of them when you’re an artist. You will get bad reviews. You will get rejection letters. You will get nasty comments on social media. You will get bombarded with people telling you you’re not good enough to make it in the industry and you’re going to have to ignore them.

Not knowing whether you’re going to succeed with your art is uncomfortable. When you’re in a creative industry, you need talent and good timing. You need dedication and luck. There’s no telling whether you are going to succeed and that’s scary. All of your hard work could be for nothing. You might never reach the destination you’ve been walking toward. You just have to have faith that everything will work out in the end. You have to blindly believe in yourself.