Time to make art without squeezing it into the cracks of exhaustion. Time to explore ideas that don’t have an immediate ROI. Time to fail gloriously in peace.
Which brings me to my latest dream journal artwork mug: Free Hugs — where I’ve befriended a Komodo dragon. Yes, a real life dragon. The kind of creature that could absolutely ruin your day… and yet in my dream world, we’re just there, hugging it out like two old war buddies who’ve seen some stuff.
This image didn’t come from logic. It came from the part of the brain that exists before capitalism, before productivity apps, before the phrase “monetise your passion” sucked all the magic out of creativity. It came from the same place your best ideas come from, the place that doesn’t care about permission.
What would you do if you won the lottery?
If I won the lottery, the first thing I’d do is laugh. Not because I’m rich, but because the universe finally decided to slip me a cheat code instead of another side quest. Then I’d probably cry. Then I’d make a coffee. Then, and this is the important part, I wouldn’t run off to buy yachts, Lambos, or some soulless beige mansion with nine bathrooms and no soul. I’d buy something far more radical: time. Money helps, obviously. Anyone telling you otherwise is either rich already or selling something. Money can buy you tools, time, courses, space, freedom from the constant low-level panic of “how am I paying for this month’s groceries?” But money can’t guarantee success. It can’t guarantee happiness. And it definitely can’t guarantee that you’ll actually sit down and do the work.
There are broke artists who create relentlessly and wealthy people who haven’t created anything since their last midlife crisis haircut.
The myth of the starving artist is romantic nonsense, usually written by people who’ve never had to choose between paying rent and buying paint. Poverty doesn’t make better art. It just makes everything harder. But money alone doesn’t make thriving artists either. What does? Investment, intentional, ruthless, self-directed investment, in your skills, your tools, and your time.
I illustrated my first kids’ book on my phone 7. Not because it was cool. Not because it was optimal. Because that’s what I had. No iPad. No fancy setup. Just stubbornness and a cracked screen and the refusal to wait for perfect conditions that never come.
Then my wife won an iPad. Then she kind of donated it to my art and creative work. And that single piece of tech sped up my art-making massively. The quality jumped. The efficiency jumped. My output jumped. Same artist. Same brain. Same weird animal obsessions. Different tool. Different results.
That’s what a small “lottery” can do when you aim it at your craft instead of your ego.
So if I won the lottery, and I don’t even need to know how much, I’d do exactly what I already do, just with less friction and more oxygen. I’d invest in my passions. In my skills. In top-tier courses. In better tools. In paints that don’t feel like they were made from crushed sidewalk chalk. And most importantly, I’d invest in time. Time to create without guilt. Time to explore. Time to make bad art so I can eventually make better art.
Because time is the ultimate luxury in a system designed to starve you of it.
And that’s where Free Hugs comes back in.
Befriending a Komodo dragon in a dream isn’t about reptiles. It’s about making peace with the things that look dangerous, impossible, or impractical. It’s about sitting with the part of you that says, “This is ridiculous… but I’m doing it anyway.” That’s the artist mindset. That’s the thriving artist mindset. Not “I hope this works.” But “I’m doing this because it matters, and I’ll figure out the rest.”
Winning the lottery doesn’t make you brave. It just makes you louder. It doesn’t give you purpose. It just gives you more room to either avoid it… or finally face it.
You don’t need millions to start investing in yourself. You just need to stop waiting for permission, from money, from time, from the invisible gatekeepers of “someday.” Invest what you can. Where you are. With what you have. Then when the universe throws you a win, big or small, you’ll already know exactly what to do with it.
Kids Book Illustrator Andy C Marshall 