Also one of the artists I was talking about, who quit to work on NFTs, was design director at one of the world's biggest agencies, so not exactly waiting tables.

But yes, I was thinking about artists waiting tables. My spouse works in theatre, and it's normal even for modestly successful actors and artists to be working service jobs. I have asked why they worked those kinds of jobs when they were clearly smart enough to have better-paying white collar jobs, and they always say that quittability was one of their top concerns.

In the period where one could live in San Francisco for a non-insane amount of money, I knew lots of visual artists and sculptors who lived like that. (Anyway, all of them are now coding or have left.)

I don't mean to contradict your experience: the word "artist" covers a pretty wide swathe.