One of the difficulties about being a creative is that bullshit is often required to earn enough to live off of. When you write a book, you may spend a very long time to write the work, then you spend a long time editing the book. Once it's actually purchased, your advance doesn't come in all at once but actually is split into 3/4 payments over the course of potentially 2 years. So if you get a 20k advance, you're actually only getting much less than that per payment. You have to then make up that shortfall with talks, interviews, patreon, and access to you in general as a published author which puts you in an authority position for advice.
Unless you make it to well above bestseller level, and potentially even then, you have to participate in the bullshit pyramid described here if you want to be able to afford a living + paying your own healthcare.
I solved this problem by deciding early on that the only way for me to get creative stuff done, and to enjoy myself while getting creative stuff done, was to treat my creative endeavours as hobbies rather than income streams. Turns out you don't need to be a full time Poet, toiling away at the academic coalface 24/7/365, to have fun writing and sharing poems.
Unless you make it to well above bestseller level, and potentially even then, you have to participate in the bullshit pyramid described here if you want to be able to afford a living + paying your own healthcare.