Balancing Act(s) - Making a Living Making Music

I'm pretty lucky.


I get to make my living doing the thing that I'm most passionate about: making music. I can finally say that again, and it feels really good. So please don't take what's about to come as any indication that I don't like my job(s), because I do. About 80% of the time, I would even say I love it (and that's a pretty great place to be)!


I do have a bit of a pet peeve, however, and it's this quote:


Because it's a load of hooey and those of us who work in the entertainment industry know it. Yes, we do what we love. Yes, we are aware that this fact makes us extremely lucky. Doing a job one loves, for a living, is the fantasy of many, many people, who don't get to spend every day working on their passion. But the key word here is, in fact, still working. We work (and work hard!) every day. I, for one, average 50-60 hours a week.

I love performing, and I love teaching. But both of those things require a great deal of prep work, decision-making, complicated scheduling, and the actual teaching and performing are (don't get me wrong) super-fun, but often exhausting!

We who are (largely) self-employed in the music business work erratic hours, usually 7 days a week, and although I am able to start work later in the day (which fits in nicely with my nocturnal internal clock) I often don't finish working until late at night (or early in the morning). Not to mention that a lot of the work I do (designing promotional material, writing blog posts, managing my websites and social media accounts, sending mailers and making cold calls) is unpaid. Hours of my time, totally "un-billable," but done in the hopes of landing another paid gig or a new student.

We don't have an employer
to pay for (or help us pay for) our healthcare, retirement, or sick time. Yes, we can (more or less) "take holiday time whenever we want," but we don't have paid vacations, so when we go on holiday, not only does it cost money, but we also lose the money we would have made during that time. So we're essentially paying twice for any time we take off to do something non-work related.

I do love my job, and I even enjoy employing most of the new skills I've learned in the process of trying to start and promote my business. I will probably never truly love making cold calls to bar and business owners to try to book my band(s), or going back and forth with a prospective new student in a flurry of emails trying to find a lesson time that fits into everyone's schedule. I will always feel bad when I have to cancel students in order to play a gig, or admit that there's just no way to fit in a family event because I can't afford to take the time off.

But I wouldn't change it for anything.

Choose a job you love and you'll work every day of your life... but you won't mind!








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