For years I couldn't afford proper art supplies, and I painted on a horrible assortment of surfaces.

Both of these oils were done on thin cardboard that had been saved from writing pads and then gessoed. Hardly archival, and I don't expect they'll be around forever.
But I suspect that this 'making do' also had an effect on the way I saw my art, because I never finished anything properly, did lots of rough sketchy things and never had anything that I could really point to and be proud of.
I had three kids to bring up on my own, so I didn't beat myself up, just did the best I could under the circumstances. Now I find that I treasure these paintings that I did on scraps and leftovers, they speak to me of hard times when I was often overwhelmed by life, but somehow I never gave up on my art.

Now that my boys are mostly independant I'm enjoying treating myself to canvases and proper boards and some of the niceties of artistic life.The problem I have now is I'm trying to retain this sketchiness that I had earlier, and not 'finish' everything to death.But the main thing is to have time to devote to the work, and I still wrestle with that some days!