I got a kick out of this - I really think your next gig should be a satire writer about trying to make it from cradle to grave 8-)

My life is the same exact story, but completely different - Im plugging at my next hope too... better luck I hope this time. 8-)

And yet I still regard you as one of the most talented artists I've ever known.

I wish. But there are probably half a billion artists in the world. We can discount most of them as being poor villagers in Indonesia or Rwanda, who earn bananas by amusing the local laborers. But the other ten million are all competing for a larger audience, and about a million are bound to be better than me. And sometimes I think a few of thousand of them are in comics, SF or furry...

*Nods* True 'nuff.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” -Calvin Coolidge

You'll note that Cal never mentioned Old Boys networks or nepotism. They're MUCH handier.

The old boy network and born well-off will do it every time -- they made Cal president!

Despite the truth that it takes hard work, abillity, ideas and persistence to succeed, it takes two other things -- one is money, which is only available to the privileged, and the other is luck. I sometimes think luck is the most important by far. But its the element of success that the successful are least likely to admit. They want you to think the succeeded entirely by the sweat of their own brown, or because of their great inerent worth... not because of a fortuitous throw of the dice. But the truth is that Michael Jackson could have ended up running a second rate limo service or selling real estate after winding down a career as child prodigy, and Bill Gates might have ended up a bankrup tafter IBM sued him for not actually having an operating system to sell them.