A few people can make a living from their art but everyone has a day job or a trust fund or lives on benefits. Because when your art is your job, it's still a job.

Applying for public funding is sales. Sales is mostly rejection. Successful sales requires accepting that you can't make anyone buy you can only make pitches. Many pitches. So many pitches that rejection is just normal.

To put it differently, you put a lot of work into your application instead of into making the thing you care about making. Applying for funding is easier than the actual work so it feels like progress. It's no more progress than working a day job and pays less.

Good luck.