The day someone else enjoys something you made, you’ll understand why people keep making things.

Making is mostly private, and privately it is hard to tell what the point is, because you are too close to the thing to feel anything but its problems. Then somebody laughs at the right moment, hums the chorus back, or asks a question about a drawing, and the work briefly exists outside your head. That is what keeps people going through the long unglamorous stretches.

Put one finished thing in front of one real person this month, in a way that lets them react honestly. Do not stand over them explaining it. Keep what they say, for the weeks when you cannot remember why you bother.