Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys OR Artists

(That's funny......between the ages of about 6 and 11 my most fervent wish was that I would grow up to be a Cowboy....I was madly in love with Tom Mix....and while I knew I would become an artist because that is what my Mother and Father wanted and expected, I can't recall wishing passionately for that outcome.) < I was just thinking about a comment my beloved cousin,Deb, made to an earlier blog in which I bemoaned the fact that blogging was a lonely and sort of thankless undertaking....... (What Deb (an incredibly talented and absolutely fantastic Painter) said was that blogging and painting have a lot in common and she is so right.) < I remember saying something about the fact that a person often gets a reply to one's email efforts and a writer may get an advance or a royalty on a book he has written, but a blogger mostly gets bubkas.... unless someone deigns to leave a comment. That is just a continuation of a contention that I have been making since my 40's when I gave up being a starving artist for the luxury of being a well fed and well paid computer programmer and I have been harranguing my adored family members ever since (whenever I could corner one of them) to avoid like the plague the thankless curse of becoming any kind of artist (And did anyone listen???? hell no......A total of Four of them not only ignored me but actually disobeyed me and are now suffering for their failure to heed my warnings....but that is another story.) < Sigh.......how pathetic that the very people who GIVE something to the world that would not exist were it not for their creativity......a bit of their souls, their ingenuity, their very essence......are the least appreciated or compensated people on earth. Doesn't that seem upside down and backward somehow???? No wonder the world doesn't make any sense whatsoever.....People who create beauty are condemned to starvation and rejection but I just read that the techno-geek who created an App for the Iphone called the "IFart" is making a bloody fortune.....what more can I say.... < Incidentally, when I use the term Artist I mean all of the creative arts.....literature, music, dance, drama etc. as well as drawing, painting and sculpture. Oddly enough, it occurs to me that two of those arts have a unique problem of their own. While a painter or a composer or a writer can practice their art all by themselves if they must, both dance and drama really require an audience......does that mean that those folk are luckier or more damned?? At least being a member of the performing arts means that, if you are lucky enough to get an audience, you at least stand the chance of receiving applause, or flowers tossed upon the stage (or perhaps having your dinner flung at you......hmmmm....life IS fraught with peril). All the Jewish Mothers of the world are obviously absolutely right.....the only sensible thing to grow up to be is either a Doctor or a Lawyer......and, of course, needless to say, a Good Son or Daughter......don't forget to call your mother.....