Contentment needn’t be dependent on talent, let alone worldly recognition. But the goal of earning money through creative self-expression, rather than through compromised labour, is a good one to pursue with some determination, I think.

It’s interesting that you mention revisiting old journal entries. This is something that I did recently and I was surprised by the fact that I have been writing about similar themes and ideas throughout the years. It’s like a mysterious thread running through my life.

Reading my old journals was like visiting an old acquaintance that I had somehow lost touch with, but who has always been there.

It was an interesting experience, and even though lot of the writing was remarkably naive and self-indulgent there was also some penetrating questions of real substance, of a real search.

As a writer, I find myself crushed by self-doubt continually. I seem to be either going up or going down ladders.

We all need encouragement in this lonely endeavor, even if it’s someone I don’t know who takes the time to write a few words of comment on something that I have written. It is good to know that you have truly touched someone.

When I feel lost in the storm of self doubt I forget that, like writing itself, it is probably a process much larger than “me” that I know nothing about, it’s part of the ebb and flow of everything, but of course I personalize everything so I often get sucked into my self deprecation.

So recently I found myself in the mud and I came across these quotes somewhat miraculously at the time I needed them. I think you may find these words encouraging as well:

“To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals – that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.”
- Honore De Balzac

“I don’t deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”
- G.K. Chesterton

“Do not quit. You see, the most constant state of an artist is uncertainty. You must face confusion, self-questioning, dilemma. Only amateurs are confident . . . be prepared to live with the fear of failure all your life.”
- William Ormond Mitchell