Making your own

 I ran across a quotation from William Blake:

I must Create a System or be enslav’d by another Man’s.

I will not Reason & Compare: My business is to Create.

The quotation was in the context of making your own religion. I’m not sure Blake made a distinction between spiritual and artistic matters. 

The motto reminds me of Roy Bedichek’s observation that you’re either your own doctor or a fool by 40. He practiced his own kind of self-care.

It also reminds me of my grandfather, who, never satisfied with a store-bought smoke, rolled his own.

• Source: The quotation is from Jerusalem. I found it in The Portable Blake, ed. by Alfred Kazin; Penguin Books, 1976, p. 460.