from man ray to manta ray

Can you give up on a dream?

No, I don't think it's advisable to talk yourself out of your dream. It's possible and sometimes necessary, but I think much depends on how rigorously you've pursued a career in music. If you can honestly say you've done all you can do to become a performer, composer, what have you, and things haven't work out the way you've imagined they would, then I think you can make your music your avocation or hobby without regret. Keep in mind, though, you aren't even thirty years old yet, so you're hardly washed up. You may be experiencing the on-set of the navel-gazing and tea-leaf reading that happens to us when we move from our twenties into our thirties. I don't want to patronize you; that was my experience, FWIW.

I think making yourself your business is the challenge of any career in the arts. I'm an actor and a fledgling writer, and I understand this conflict all too well. I've worked a few other jobs along the way, and all of them were satisfying and certainly more lucrative to greater or lesser degrees. Still, it wasn't until I got serious about setting and pursuing my artistic goals that I started to cobble together a satisfying career as an artist.

First of all, consider what it is that you really want to do with your music. Do you want to perform? Compose? Teach? Whatever it is, identify it concretely and then ask yourself some questions. Who are your contacts in the music world? What's your training? Would more training at a better school be a good use of or waste of time? Who are your role-models or people whose careers you'd like to emulate? How did they get where they are, and what did they do that you haven't? What resources are out there that deal with the business side of music? What can I learn from those? Once you start giving structure to your dream by turning it into a set of attainable goals and milestones you've already achieved toward it, you can address the aspects of it that may be too overwhelming to think about when taken altogether. "Your dream" will seem less like some magical orb dangling out there in space just out of your grasp, and more like a satisfying way of living you come to after a rewarding, if at times arduous, journey.

Then I think you may ask yourself about the practical considerations of your life - do you have debt you have to pay? What kind of rent, bills and expenses are you responsible for? What's your standard of living? Can you live more humbly without feeling deprived? Do you want to struggle for a time, or could you be happy living with my music as a side project to your other, more lucrative chosen career? Once you've got both sides of the equation mapped out practically, then you can start to make choices. Whatever you do, choose because of what you know rather than what you fear.

Good luck.
posted by TryTheTilapia at 7:55 AM on July 14, 2007




And remember that what you DO can always change... you don't need to carve your career goals into stone. Follow your heart.
posted by loiseau at 9:00 AM on July 14, 2007

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