Artists don’t break because the work is hard.
We break because we cling too tightly to the idea that doing the work should make us happy.

But the truth is simple:
The harder you cling to a perfect result, the more your hands shake.
The tighter you grip the brush, the uglier the line becomes.
The more you try to be fulfilled, the more you confirm you aren’t.

Somewhere along the way, we inherited this strange belief that we’re supposed to feel good all the time.
That a career in VFX should constantly reward us.
That meaning comes packaged as comfort.

It doesn’t.

Every old philosophy, from Zen to the poets, says the same thing:
Chasing happiness is the surest way to lose it.
To want fulfillment is to highlight its absence.
To grasp at security is to feel insecure.

And the modern version of this delusion is especially cruel to artists.
It whispers that if you’re not inspired, energized, and joyful, something is wrong with you.
When in reality, you’re just human.

Humans adapt.
We normalize everything.
The first approved shot feels like an achievement.
The hundredth feels like Tuesday.
This isn’t failure; it’s the baseline resetting.

So when you chase happiness, you’re trying to outrun a moving target.
And you can’t.

But meaning does not run.
Meaning waits for you in the work itself.
In the tension, the discipline, the discomfort of doing something that alters the shape of who you are.

Real happiness shows up as a residue.
A side effect.
A flicker that appears after you’ve done something worthwhile, not before.

Avoiding pain will not protect you.
It just numbs everything else alongside it.
Joy and sorrow share the same doorway; close it on one and the other can’t enter either.

So stop chasing happiness.
Chase clarity.
Chase growth.
Chase the kind of work that knocks you off your orbit and forces you to rebuild with more dimension.

Artists were not made for constant comfort.

We were made to feel the full spectrum:
to be moved, undone, rebuilt, sharpened,
and in that process, to become something happiness alone could never shape.