What are you doing tonight?
Is it something other than your work? Is it some focused practice? Or are you lounging?
I don’t believe you can really and fully be successful in your art unless there is nothing in the known universe that is more exciting and more fulfilling for you to do with your evenings, your mornings and your spare minutes then the making of art.
I could wax on and on about balance, and the idea that we need to get out and meet people, and see and experience new things. That is all a given, as it should be, and almost certainly an unnecessary point to be made.
But I have too many wonderfully talented friends who pine and complain about how there is no place for their work, no space, no money, no time, or any other thing that prevents them from making their work. And yet they find time and resources to play video games constantly, be out shopping all weekend, and be out a few nights a week.
And I just get tired of it.
Making art is work. It’s awesome, it’s cool, it’s great and it is wildly fulfilling. But it’s also work. Some days you just have to punch the clock and push the ball forward. Yes it is significantly less glamorous than you might have imagined from all the artist interviews you read in high school and college. But you put in the time, and you keep showing up, and slowly the idea  congeals, the forms take shape, processes take over, and the platform rises. There will be considerable upkeep, and your returns are not guaranteed. But the value is there.
So if there is something more interesting on TV, if the video game is more exciting, or if all the places you could be prevent you from being in the studio, than you might as well give up on the dream you keep complaining about. Because the studio is the only place it happens, and the only place it will ever happen.

Lets get to work.