This is the dream. But the author even mentions the reality >Having tried this both ways, I can say that having a steady salary (and health insurance!) allows

This is the dream. But the author even mentions the reality >Having tried this both ways, I can say that having a steady salary (and health insurance!) allows me to do much better work than when I was worried about my next source of funding. So yes, there are, in theory, no gates of knowledge or funding. But overall this reads as a lucky person passionately encouraging those considering the same path, but from a very lucky position of survivorship bias.