To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that's understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one's basic self-worth into question.

Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won't count for much

The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work. To see them, you need only look at the work clearly - without judgment, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes. Without emotional expectations. Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child

Even talent is rarely distinguishable, over the long run, from perseverance and lots of hard work.

Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot - and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution - and it should be.