What's it like to do art?

A while back my buddy Brandon and I discovered the board game Twilight Struggle. It's a pretty hard game, and very elegant. We played it as much as we could and got somewhat obsessed with it. We played it hard. At one point we were playing it over email and I was playing so hard that struggling with the emotional ups and downs of the contest became a significant part of my day; became a significant part of the contest. When you're in a contest like that, you play with everything you've got. You don't just try to play well, you try to break your opponent, to destroy them. If you did any less, it would be disrespect to them, disrespect to your understanding that they are playing just as hard. This is what art is like to me. I'm not very good at art. I hardly have any time to devote to it. I haven't achieved any very impressive results. But it's a game I can play hard.