Updated January 16, 2026
Hi Folks,
The prime aim I am focusing on is the Creative Lifestyle as my theme or motif.
There currently is no paywall for people who are paid subscribers. Everything is accessible for the most part. Since a few of you have become VIP paying subscribers that means I am now a professional writer! So, I have been getting serious with it.
My secret plan has been to organize the posts in the Touchonian into a series of books about the Creative Lifestyle for Artists. You, my favorite readers, are privy to the books in their raw formation. All worthy essays through 2025 have been organized into manuscript structures and I am starting to go through them line by line at this point.
I would really appreciate your help by making comments, asking questions and suggesting topics I should explore and write about. It is hard for me to dream up what artists need and want to know to keep going and keep creating. I have fifty years of figuring out all of the details I needed to keep going and become self-sustaining as an artist and want to share enough insight to smooth the path for others facing this complicated, daunting task of being a self-sustaining artist. I know from experience it can feel overwhelming, unreachable and even depressing. So feel free to say or ask something! Thanks in advance.
Please leave comments, questions, topic ideas, etc
I think of myself as a natural born artist. Being an artist was always my main intention since at least high school. I have been a working artist for the last forty plus years. At times it has been tough, hard to figure out and sometimes very good. The last decade or so has been great in terms of being reliably self-sustaining without doing other things. A large part of the Touchonian is about reflecting on my ideas related to establishing a creative lifestyle, especially a self sustaining lifestyle and what I think it takes to create one and maintain it based on my own experience and experimentation.
I decided back in July of 2022 to start keeping a daily journal and I use a Word document that is always open on my desktop to capture any textual materials that I write down which includes daily notes about what I am doing for the day, when I woke up, when I went to sleep and ‘whatever’ in between. Also collage poetry, correspondence, articles, interviews, notes and anything else written.
Some of my journal notes explore looking at how I got started thinking about being an artist, some are about my exploration of different spiritual or philosophical ideas that relate to being an artist, some explore what it takes to try to develop the self sustaining business part of being an artist. It is a journal, so it is pretty casual. I will also include at least one image in each post because I make a lot of art and I document everything.
When I am writing about the creative life, I mostly have my own kids in mind, who are 46, 40 and 31 years old at the moment. Th oldest and youngest are both doing their best to develop and live out their creative lifestyles. So I am mostly thinking about this age range in the writings I present here. The writings will be selected from my journal entries that I think might provide some good advice or food for thought to young creative people trying to figure out their own creative lifestyle.
DISCLAIMER: I only know what I know and I only know so much and I have already forgotten most of it. So, there is the limit.
Please become a paying subscriber if you are willing and able. This will encourage me to continue providing this content and to keep writing about all of the various angles of how to think about your artistic activity and how to build a lifestyle around it that will help you keep going.
Thanks for reading. This is a completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books and/or become a paid subscriber
Would love to hear from you, click through and leave a comment.
I'm glad I got to read your first post as I've only subscribed (that is I found you here) less than a year. I'm not in touch with any other artists that I knew from way back when I was married to an art dealer as I've lost contact with them over the years so having your articles and communicating via the comments is important to me to be able to keep that artist channel of ideas open. I'm pretty much solo in my creating of art and have been communicating with this woman I knew from college who retired and has discovered working in clay as her medium so we'll often communicate about art which is needed nourishment. Thank you for having this platform which feeds my soul that's been hungry for art-talk.