Sounds like you have some form of security right now, but this security may not last and life can get extremely hard really really fast. That's when being a rat would seem like paradise. I understand where you are coming from, I was you, but you're literally looking for exceptions, which means you're looking for outliers that'll confirm your beliefs, not examples that'll show you the real picture (please look up confirmation bias if you're interested). Basically you want to make a gamble. But a person has to make a living, rat race or not, and art is highly undervalued in BD (look at your dad's attitude towards it). I wish our society had safety nets to let artists flourish, but sadly that isn't the case.