Before you read, let me warn you it's long, so unless you have time to waste, then don't bother!

I've been debating back and forth about a big decision I need to make and I could really use some good advice right now- should I quit my job to focus completely on my music?

Here's my situtation- since I was 14 years old, it's been my dream (like millions of other people) to become a singer/muscian. I write and produce all of my music by myself as well as sing (again, I know millions of others do as well and that I'm nothing special). As I'm sure most people on here can understand, all I think about ALL DAY LONG when I'm at work (a boring office job) is music. I'm not joking when I say that I think about music at least once every five minutes- that's how much it means to me. I've even written quite a few good lyrics at work as well!

However, I've really been thinking the past several months about how I will never be happy making my living doing a "regular" job for the rest of my life. I just can't do it. Call me stupid and/or a dreamer, but I do still have that dream of getting a record deal. I don't need to be a huge star, but I would like to get signed to at least some label and be able to have at least a decent amount of people know who I am and know music, as well as make a living from it. I don't need millions of dollars, I would be happy just to make enough money to live. I don't believe in giving up on dreams- I recently fulfilled a non-music dream that I'd had for 5 years that most would think was almost impossible to achieve, but I finally saw that dream come true and that made me remember that dreams CAN come true if you don't give up.

This is also why reality is setting in very clearly right now- next month I will be 25 years old and I'm starting to realize it's kind of "do or die" time for me- it been said over and over again that after the age of 25, it gets even harder than it already is to get a record deal, because age seems to be everything in the music industry. Lately, work has been killing my creativity and draining all of my energy and focus- I had been recording and working on my music at nights and on the weekend, but I've realized I just can't do it anymore. When I come home, my brain is fried and all I want to do is relax and rest and I keep putting my music off even though I really do want to work on it. And whenever I try to force myself to work on music, I get poor results because my mental energy is just gone.

So my question is, should I quit my job to focus completely on making the best album I can, that I've always dreamed of making and can rest knowing I put my absolute best into it while I'm still young and to go after a dream I've had since I was a kid (with the possibility of realizing my dream) or should I stay at a job that I get no satisfaction from that just pays OK and only work on my music here and there, which would mean most likely I would probably never finish my album or be able to put my absolute best in it? My financial situation is this: my credit card will be paid off by the end of August. After that, I will only have my monthly car payment of $300 to pay for. I still live at home (yes, go ahead and laugh!), so I don't have to pay for anything else other than my car payment, my insurance every 6 months, and little things like gas. My plan was to save up enough money to pay for 6 months of car payments and insurance and gas so that I can spend those 6 months not working, because I know I could complete my album by then. My only hesitation is that it took forever (9 months) to find my current job and that I may have a hard time finding another job after I finish my album and that I'll have to charge my car payments to my credit card until I find a job. I know it sounds like a silly question, but where I live, it's VERY hard to find a job, especially when you only have a high school diploma, but at the same time, it's not like my job pays a fortune and I rather try and fail at something I've always wanted to do than to not try at all and always wonder what if.

Could you please tell me what you would do if you were in my shoes? Do you thinik it's worth the risk? I'm sorry this was so long, but I'm just really confused and I would love to hear what some of you would do.

Thanks again for any advice!

PS- To make this SONAR 6 related, let me add that I LOVE SONAR and that I record all of my music using it!

Work and do music. Life's a ****. You might suck so bad that no one will buy your material. Only quit working if you are making a subsistent income from music or have someone willing to support a 25 year old financially.

You think of music every 5 minutes? Most guys think of other things at that same frequency. Maybe your priorities are screwed up?

Is there a place to get a part time job? And not being negitive but lets just say that things dont pan out the way you're hoping they will, then what, will you be able to find another job to support yourself with? Most musicians that make a living at their craft also work other jobs in hopes that their music will take over more and more. And you cant just put out one good CD, you have to put out one after another and hope that people still buy them. And finding a job at the age of 35 or 40 is kind of hard with no work expierence.

Just a few things to consider.
Mike

I'm not a purist... but music is part of my being not what I do.
I've made millions $$$ performing for sold out arenas in my hayday... actually I just sold out two 20K arenas last year!
now i keep a good day job and continue to write and perform...
For me the key thing to remember is that life is about balance, ying to the yang... if you don't have it you tip and fall...
A wise person once told me many years ago... "As long and you enjoy the road getting to where you want to be... it doesn't matter if you get there"
My advice to you is don't use music as an excuse not to "keep it real"... you can work and still follow your music it dream.
Peace, :)
Gary

Definitely keep your day job until you can support yourself with music. It's not easy to make a living off of it as you might already know. If I were you and you really wanna try making it in the music scene, and you don't live in a city were your style of music booms then I would save some money and move to that city (usually anything up north depends on the style you want to focus on). Once there find a part time job that'll give you enough to sustain yourself and meet as many musicians, that are doing the same style as you, as possible. Start networking even while you're at home, right now, on the internet, and go to websites like Craig's List or any local musician clasifies you can find. Have demos ready with clips of your music and open a myspace website and post some there too. I can keep going on what other things you can do but I'm sure you get the idea. Just start networking until you find solid connections before moving out though. It's very important to be right where things are happening though (wherever that may be). HTH.

Something to consider also is, when music becomes you job and you HAVE to do it every day, will you still want to do it every day? Maybe you will, but sometimes you want something badly because you can't have it, but once you have it (and worse, you can't not have it anymore) it can change your perspective. Suddenly the grass might seem greener back where you were.

But, having said that, if you going to try it, now is the time. You are young enough that there's time to recover, whereas it gets harder and harder to take that risk as you move forward. I took it in terms of starting a new company, spending all my savings to finance it, and have lived on a subsistence salary for the last 5 years with no insurance, when I could have been making six figures a year with no risk. I'm 40'ish, and it's a lot harder to do at 40'ish than at 25. But, in my case I had no family of my own so the risk was purely that I'd end up living in a grocery cart, not that I'd destroy the lives of a wife and children. I think that the payoff will be worth it, and it's just finally begun that upward spiral (a product based company is a lot harder row to hoe than a services based company), but it's a huge risk. I could still end up in my mid-40's with out a penny to my name.

The risk for you is that you'll have to give up some number of years to it. If it doesn't happen, are you prepared to deal with the consequences. I'm planning on a life of cheap wine and sniffing glue in a public housing project if it goes wrong, so I'm covered if my business falls apart. But just make sure you are willing to deal with the failure if you fail. Later in life, you may never forgive yourself if you don't take the risk. But, later in life you may never forgive yourself that you spent 5 years on a failed venture instead of building up a career.

Boy, was that an up-beat post or what?

It is, of course, your decision (which is a roundabout way of saying, "don't blame me if it doesn't work out!"). But I do have a couple points you might want to ruminate on...

1. It's been my experience that there are two types of regrets in life - for the things you did, and for the things you didn't do. And they have very little in common. Everybody does stupid things in life, but we can chalk most of them up to experience - rarely do they become things that we regret for years and years. It's the regret for the things we didn't do that is truly awful. That's the kind of regret that haunts you. The girl you were fascinated by but didn't have the nerve to ask out... the preposterous year spent hiking around the globe with a friend that you decided to sit out on... that kind of thing. Few things worse than lying in bed at night saying "If only".

2. As far as dedicating your life to something that may well leave you in the gutter, what's the worst that can happen? You're probably not going to be beaten, maimed, scarred, jailed or killed if you go for it. You may well end up utterly broke - but is that so bad? Could you crash with your parents or some good friends for a couple months if worst comes to worst? Do you have any kids to support? Can you make your money last? Figure out what the worst case scenario is, how you could deal with it, and if it would really be so bad, and go from there.

3. That said, is it really imperative that you drop everything to go into music? A lot of freelancers (writers, journalists, etc.) will keep a part-time job that lets them make ends meet, if barely, while they pursue their dream. That takes the desperation factor out of it. If you can figure out how to organize things so that you can do something like that, you could theoretically spend the rest of your life pursuing music! Is having 148 non-job hours a week really that much worse than having 168?

Best of luck!

Wail, I hope ya didn't have that there haircut that yor sportin in yor dang avatar when you was sellin out. . .er. . .them arenas, there Gary, ol pal. Or that jacket neither. Unless that's like yor trademark or somethin. But listen, could ya spare a few tiny, puny thousand or so a them millions ya made for one hell of a dang project me and Esquizzle ( I know you've heard a him) is gettin up? It's a no brainer. That there's why I'm involved. Whad'ya say Gary? And , hey, are you any kin ta Dan? He's a real good guitar player.

Post some of your music. We'll let you know if you should keep the day job or not.

I had to get 2 jobs to pay for all my music toys.
Cj