I have a bachelors of fine arts in painting, and I'm dang good at it. I even have two portraits I painted of Patrick Mahomes that he signed and resold at his charity galas, so somewhere on this planet two of my paintings bear the signature of the world's premier athlete.

I'm a working artist and I get 15-20 commissions a year, but it's not my main job, and I'm fortunate to have a primary job that I enjoy, pays really well, and has benefits.

I wouldn't have that if I were primarily focused on being an artist.

I also like that, as an artist, I have no one to answer to and my vision is my own, because I hate the gallery system. Mainly, though, I hate how much harder its become for the art community in general, with people losing jobs to AI Slop, arts endowments being cut or eliminated, and tuition for art school skyrocketing. The reason I didn't go for my masters was that my graduate TA's in art school had come from big schools in NY, Chicago, and LA with six-figure debt and they were making $20,000 a year teaching college courses.