Living life as an independent entity, according to your own values and on your own terms, involves one of two paths in life. Either you live extremely simply with the bare minimum of possessions and comforts, or you master some field, a field for which you have a passion. Or, you can wait until retirement. So three paths, counting the third.

Becoming a master requires sacrificing many common but overestimated things. It requires putting long term desires ahead of short-term ones, and putting values ahead of impulses. We are free and independent only to the extent of our self-mastery. Our self-discipline. Our willingness to sacrifice in service of a dream, a long-term objective. If we cannot manage ourselves, we must submit to the management of others.

Many of us have an unlived life. What stops us from living that life is self-doubt, procrastination, a reluctance to work hard with no guarantee of getting paid. Payment might come years down the road.

You become a master, in part, out of a love of a subject. Something about it excites you on a deep level. Without that love you won’t be able to endure the years of learning required, the setbacks, the disappointments, the rejection. You also become a master, in part, in order to live independently. To not have a boss. To live your own values, in your way, on your own terms. All involve sacrifice. 

The Master’s commitment to his or her work transcends success. The Master puts in the hours, finishes the work, and lets the results be what they may. The Master does the work largely out of a love of the subject, a love of the materials and tools and a compulsion to make a vision real.

I think the real artists are too busy with just being and growing and acting (on canvass or however) like themselves to worry about the end.  The end will be what it will be.  The object is intense living, fulfillment; the great happiness in creation.

- - Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

Your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work. If you go at your work with half a heart, it will show in the lackluster results and in the laggard way you reach the end. If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you. You may not see this, but you can be sure that the public will feel it, and that they will see this, and they will receive your work in the same lackluster way it was created. If you are excited and obsessive in the hunt, it will show in the details. If your work comes from a deep place within, its authenticity will be communicated. This applies equally to science, business or to the arts. Your work must have a degree of obsessiveness, or it is doomed. You must never simply embark on any creative endeavor in your field, placing faith in your own brilliance to see it through. You must make the right, the perfect choice for your energies.
     - Robert Greene, Mastery

Masters are continually learning, trying to expand their field of knowledge, of skill. They are sponges for information, mostly information inside their field but also outside. They constantly search for that imaginative leap, that transcendent vision. and then they try to incorporate it into creative action.

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Below, a two page spread from the upcoming Heron Dance journal,

Nurturing The Song Within.

Pre-order the Collector’s Edition printed by a high-end art book printer here.
These are available just on pre-order. There are now a couple of payment options including four equal monthly installments.
After publication, these journals will be printed by a print-on-demand printer at the same price.

You can download a PDF of the two-page spread below by clicking on the image.