Thank you so much for this. I’ve been trying to hold my ground against this for the last year or more. I started making my own books to use for my diary. People who love me and wish the best for me keep saying some variation of the following, “These are beautiful. You could sell these on etsy easily.” I keep saying no and trying to explain that I would damage myself and my diary work if I put it into the market place.

I’ve done it before with other mediums and it ended badly each time. I loved hand weaving and ended up doing polypropylene samples for golf bags which taught me a lot about materials but was less than satisfying. I loved textile design but ended up designing tacky polyester plaid for cheap couches. I loved jewelry making but ended up having to justify my efforts and prices to jaded craft fair attendees. Trying to hold on to my intrinsic motivation this time against their unquestioned, conditioned advice to the extrinsic rewards feels like a rough swim upstream during spring floods. Now I’ll just make them read this while I keep my day job and do my real work on my own terms.