To quote Anna Quindlen:
Trying to be perfect may be sort of inevitable for people like us, who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and in its good opinion….[I]t really requires you mainly to read the zeitgeist of wherever and whenever you happen to be, and to assume the masks necessary to be the best of whatever the zeitgeist dictates or requires….

But nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself….

When I quit the New York Times to be a full-time mother, the voices of the world said that I was nuts. When I quit it again to be a full-time novelist, they said I was nuts again. But I am not nuts. I am happy. I am successful on my own terms. Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all. Remember the words of Lily Tomlin: If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/oped/Quindlen.shtml

My novels haven’t made much money, but I’m still getting published. I got dropped by one publisher and the series got picked up by another. I’m coming out in hardcover. I’ve had foreign sales. Every time a Derek Stillwater novel is announced, movie producers et al., swarm.

So why doesn’t that feel like a success? Because the goals changed, I think. It used to be: get published; then make a living as a writer…

Now it’s: make more money, or make most of your living off fiction, or…

Ah, that constantly receding horizon.