Day 0379

What would represent optimal conditions for working? Not splendid isolation -- I don't have the willpower to get up early and work consistently. Ideally I would follow someone else in their routine, and break for lunch or coffee for some social interaction. I could reliably do eight hours of work a day that way I think. Here, on my own, with my bed right here and a well-stocked kitchen right there, I cannot squeeze myself for much more than four hours of painting! Absurd! I want to push myself hard, but find myself idling and frittering away time quite uselessly, particularly before lunch. I need to get up earlier and jump straight in, to secure a few hours at least before I sabotage myself.

The life of idle ease, the parasitic comfort of living at my dad's is not helping me. It is too easy, it robs me of motivation.

But art is not a handicraft, but the conveying of a feeling experienced by the artist. And feeling can be born in a man only if he lives the many-sided life natural and proper for human beings. And that is why giving artists security in their material needs is the most harmful condition for artistic productivity, because it releases the artist from the condition proper to all men of struggling with nature to support his own and other people's lives, and thereby experiencing the most important feelings proper to human beings. No situation is more harmful for artistic productivity than the situation of complete security and luxury in which artists usually live in our society.
Leo Tolstoy - What is Art?