11–20 of 56 posts
A violinist I know once gave me the following advice: "If you love music, find yourself a job which doesn't involve playing music. If you become a professional musician, you'll find that you have to take every gig which comes along, just to make ends meet; you'll find yourself saying 'dear god, not Beethoven's fifth symphony AGAIN'; and ultimately you'll end up not loving music any more." I figure that doing a startu…
One week, they purchased a large number of lottery tickets as a group, and found that their excitement for winning the lottery (and therefore quitting Riverdance) was more than their excitement for the job itself.
Here's the link -- act two is the one that you want:
This American Life did a great segment on some dancers from one of the Riverdance companies, and how their job was coveted (it was incredibly stable income for a dancer) but also tedious and repetitive. Every show, they were basically mailing in their performances, full of faked energy and enthusiasm. One week, they purchased a large number of lottery tickets as a group, and found that their excitement for winning th…
Do you want to be "creative"? What does that mean to you?
Do you need to be an actor/dancer/singer/whatever to be creative? Why?
Do you like programming? When?
Do you like where you currently work? When?
If you were unsuccessful as an actor/dancer/singer/whatever, would you be happy? Why?
If you were in your ideal programming job, would you be happy? Why?
etc.
If you do this carefully, you might be surprised by what you find. Not all of our needs are self-consistent or rational.
This American Life did a great segment on some dancers from one of the Riverdance companies, and how their job was coveted (it was incredibly stable income for a dancer) but also tedious and repetitive. Every show, they were basically mailing in their performances, full of faked energy and enthusiasm. One week, they purchased a large number of lottery tickets as a group, and found that their excitement for winning th…
One more thing: my advice? Decompose your needs. Break down the big, intractable life problem into the smallest questions that you can, and answer each question as honestly as you can: Do you want to be "creative"? What does that mean to you? Do you need to be an actor/dancer/singer/whatever to be creative? Why? Do you like programming? When? Do you like where you currently work? When? If you were unsuccessful as an…
A violinist I know once gave me the following advice: "If you love music, find yourself a job which doesn't involve playing music. If you become a professional musician, you'll find that you have to take every gig which comes along, just to make ends meet; you'll find yourself saying 'dear god, not Beethoven's fifth symphony AGAIN'; and ultimately you'll end up not loving music any more." I figure that doing a startu…
Any possibility of a crossover career? Something where the medium of composition is the computer? Something along the lines of computer animation, computer-generated music, etc. Also, web design involves a lot of aesthetic design skill including background art, typography, etc.
What, in concrete terms, do you mean by "pursuing the arts"?
What i mean is to get back on the stage and pursue acting, or start painting seriously and try and get my work in a gallery. In the end, I enjoy entertaining people and creating things (which is why I got into programming in the first place). My main concern is my loss creativity over the past couple of years due to my career path - and somehow i'm looking for a way to regain that and make it my primary passion in li…
In my experience, if you already had a primary passion you wouldn't care if it offered a "career path". At a minimum you'd be trying to reconcile it with a "real job" and would eventually stumble onto a crossroads.
If you're just unhappy tro to desocialize. Change your environment, your media and your perspective. At an extreme you could move to another country and try learning the language while getting by. Switching cities or jobs is also good, as is picking up a new hobby and meeting new people.
Do your best to kill the expectations that other people place on you and live for yourself.
A violinist I know once gave me the following advice: "If you love music, find yourself a job which doesn't involve playing music. If you become a professional musician, you'll find that you have to take every gig which comes along, just to make ends meet; you'll find yourself saying 'dear god, not Beethoven's fifth symphony AGAIN'; and ultimately you'll end up not loving music any more." I figure that doing a startu…
This seems to be the most practical solution right now, however i'm worried about the time crunch that working at a startup will have on me.
This is what I've found so far along with the mentioned calculations: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122341
This way you can zoom in on the problem. HTH.
make things that artists like :)
The trick is don't think and/or. There are factors that will work against you though. I noticed after switching from the visual side of my brain used in fine-arts to the predominantly textual side used in programming, it pretty much killed my drawing instinct. The instictive need to draw and scribble. I've only just lately tried to balance the two. Not easy since each require different ways of thinking & looking at things.