Posted by Sean Chisham on December 01, 2001 at 22:16:07:
In Reply to: Negative thoughts - help! posted by John Tuba on December 01, 2001 at 19:59:52:
I know exactly how you feel. I was so burnt out with music by the time I finished my Masters that I was at a real low. I got a non-music job to attempt to pay the bills. I may have used 1/2 the dedication I used towards music to learn that new field, but it yielded about 700% more knowledge then the next guy's more "typical" efforts. In most jobs you can be relativelly lazy and compared to the work you are putting in now and still come out way ahead. It was frightening to witness how desperate employers were for someone who was trained to work hard. That is what music does for you, if you are competitive at it.
Soon we were able to sell off the 1977 Chevrolet Impala with the flat tire and fried transmission for $50 and buy a used Volvo from a friend. We moved to a better apartment and eventually rented a house and bought a new car. After a couple of years I got the urge to play back and started to play for me, and not for anyone else. No outside imposed demands, just playing whatever I wanted. No matter how bad it sounded, and it did, I was still happy.
Well, one day I decided that I wanted to give the whole professional musician thing another go, so I started to work at it again. I wanted to be in a military band from the getgo. There was one large problem looming. Sitting down for hours on my butt had caused my butt to grow to 235+ lbs. At 5'11", this doesn't sit well with Uncle Sam's military. Focussed the energies and lost 30lbs in 6 months to make the body fat requirements and then started the practice. A few auditions later and some fortunate luck and I got a gig.
If you are spinning your wheels and want to try to make some money to help support the family, then I would say to pull up the anchor and change ports for a while. You can still study privatelly if you wish, and you won't have music theory tests bugging you. The only real loss are the ensembles and sometimes you can even figure out a way to get some ensemble playing in with local college bands or community bands.
Leaving school doesn't mean leaving music.
sean