I don't really know how to talk about this but; In my opinion, every artist's mental health would benefit to have a space- probably a sketchbook- in which their purpose is specifically not to produce artifacts, but the opposite; to decouple the joy of art making from the production of an artifact
In our current landscape, almost anything you do as an artist, you will be evaluating through a lens of capitalist productivity. Almost nothing you do as an artist, can you fully separate from capitalism. But these spaces are essential for your mental health.
Think of it as building a sand castle; you do not build a sand castle to make a nice castle; you do it purely for the feeling of it; of pushing, pulling, carving, molding; the joy of solving the puzzle that is sand, knowing specifically that it will all fade with the tide.
In fact, if sand castles didn't wash away, we wouldn't feel as much joy in making them. They would occupy space, or we would seek to save them somehow. But the point of making a sand castle isn't the greatness of what you make, it's the joy of making it.
You must have a place where you're free not to be "good", or "improve", where no other person's joy is considered but your own. There is no status here, there is no fame, no fortune, no efficiency. It is all love, and it is a love that is intentionally meaningless to everyone else, like a dream.
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