Now I'm having to live with sales of around 50,000 per album - but I'm pretty content with my place in the general scheme of things, even if it's meant I don't drive a fancy car and can't afford grand vacations.
My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.
I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago.