A couple of Morisots, why not

I spent more years than I care to remember with the kind of crippling writer's block that is so common to academics and aspiring culture writers. Oddly, it's been years now since I've had that feeling, though I write and present at a similar volume, just for mostly private audiences. 

The thing about art, I've found, is that even when I'm just copying someone else's work, I seem to be able to get into a mentality--"well, this is probably not going to go as well as I want it to, but I'll do it anyway"--that I could never manage before. Is this what getting older is like?