[mauvehaus]

I think your first challenge is to define what you mean by "successful". I no longer build software, and instead build wooden furniture. Setting aside the question of whether or not that's the arts (I don't care one way or the other), my partner and I went into that career change knowing full well it would never pay the way software did.

We've also structured our lives such that we can live with the fluctuations in income that result from that career change. We live in modest places, drive older cars (verging on shitbox in my case, but I do most of my own work and can keep an older car running. Her car is newer), don't eat out much (even in normal times) and vacation inexpensively (we're both hikers). I suspect you know this, at least abstractly, but it bears pointing out.

Given our current goals, our working version of success is that my income will help us cut into the principal of a mortgage much more rapidly than we could on hers alone. Mind you we need to find a house to buy first, but details. Point being, we're looking in a price range that we can afford on her income indefinitely. Success for us looks like owning it outright faster than we would without my income.

Less tangibly, success has included me being excited about my work. I was not excited about going and writing code for pretty much the whole time we were together before I made that career change.