[analog31]

>>> When I finished school in 2010 (yep, along time ago now), I wanted to go try and make it as a musician. I figured if punk bands could just learn on the job, I could too. But my mum insisted that I needed to do something, just in case.

Amusing coincidence. I also wanted to be a rock star, or at least a successful working musician. My mom also talked me out of it. Her argument was: If there's no way to learn it in school, then go to school anyway and learn something fun, like math. Then you can still be a rock star. Or a programmer, since I had already learned programming.

So I went to college as a math major, and eventually ended up with a physics degree.

I still play music, but not full time, and with the comfort of supporting myself with a day job.

[AdieuToLogic]

> Amusing coincidence. I also wanted to be a rock star, or at least a successful working musician.

> I still play music, but not full time, and with the comfort of supporting myself with a day job.

Some people say;

  Pursue your dream or you will regret it.

This is said by people who regret their own choices.

Other people say;

  Don't make your dream a job, because all it will
  be is a job and no longer special.

This is said by people who had misconceptions about what pursuing their dream actually entailed.

I say;

  Happiness is found in neither a dream chased nor a chosen
  profession.  It is instead a choice we make each day in
  what we do, in how we view same, and if we allow
  ourselves to possess it.

  What constitutes each day is immaterial.

But that's just me.

[muzani]

I do think you need the dream to be happy. Money/career is a prerequisite of dreams.

Some want to live on the seas. They can be perfectly happy as a sailor, even if poor and single.

Some want a family, educated children, respect. They would likely need a nice house, enough resources to get a scholarship, a shot at retirement. This is obtainable working in public service, even without money.

But most have multiple dreams. That's what makes things complex. The man who wishes for a wife but also wishes to be on the seas will find much fewer paths available. Sailors also don't generally get respected by most in laws.

To mix the two, they try to find the dream-job. Perhaps work for a big oil company and be 'forced' to go offshore.

Eventually people learn that desire is suffering in some form and cut down on the number of dreams. They may even see this as mature and try to educate others that this is the way. Those who have kids often are forced to pick kids as the dream. So there's a selection bias as well.

[scrame]

vonnegut said:

"Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go".

[dyauspitr]

I say if you have money to do whatever you want everyday, there’s an overwhelming chance you’ll be happy.

The rest of those sayings are just for us plebs that have to rationalize working 40-60 hours a week.

[Scarblac]

But that's a trap, the money you "need" is partly decided by how much you have available. Once you're used to the money from a 40 day job it's hard to do with less, but other people manage fine because they never got used to having a lot.

[AdieuToLogic]

My key point is that happiness is a choice. I hope everyone can find a way to choose it.

[balamatom]

That's wrong. Plenty of people have "found a way to choose happiness" already, and we've all seen what exactly they've wrought.

[totetsu]

I think PP's point was .. that even if you spend your whole life pressed into laboring to produce a surplus to satisfy the excessive consumption of the elites of your heretical society, in ways that create existential risk for future generations, and are at odds with your own inner values and moral compass.. you can still see the 'immateriality' of all that in the grand scheme of things and choose to be happy.

[AdieuToLogic]

No, my point is happiness is a choice.

There is no sociopolitical statement, no call-to-arms, no pontification as to the measure of one's life, no generational implications. There is an existential consideration, but not of the nature your post implies.

Happiness is an individual choice, available to us all at any time.

Full stop.

[bccdee]

If anyone at any time can simply choose to be happy, why do we care whether (for instance) our arms get chopped off? We are equally capable of choosing to be happy with or without arms. Why do we avoid harm?

[cardanome]

Thank you, your post cured my depression. (Sarcasm)

This is pure magical thinking. There are many reasons to be not happy. Being in pain, having lost a loved one, not having your physical needs met and well simply having depression or a myriad of other problems.

And people shouldn't be happy with all circumstances. It is not healthy to be happy all the time. Sometimes accepting the negative emotions is important for growth.

[AdieuToLogic]

> Thank you, your post cured my depression. (Sarcasm)

Your welcome. (Sarcasm returned)

> This is pure magical thinking. There are many reasons to be not happy. Being in pain, having lost a loved one, not having your physical needs met and well simply having depression or a myriad of other problems.

Of course there are many life situations where "being happy" is not what a person can or needs to experience at that moment, where "moment" is defined as some period of time determined by each person. And there are medical conditions where trying to choose happiness is simply not possible, such as "having depression or a myriad of other problems."

> And people shouldn't be happy with all circumstances. It is not healthy to be happy all the time. Sometimes accepting the negative emotions is important for growth.

I never wrote anything to that effect. What I wrote was:

  Happiness is an individual choice,
  available to us all at any time.

Just because a choice is available does not mandate it must be chosen immediately and unconditionally.

But you go ahead and mischaracterize what I wrote to serve whatever agenda you have and I will reiterate what I posted earlier in this thread:

  My key point is that happiness is a choice.
  I hope everyone can find a way to choose it.

[mbesto]

> Thank you, your post cured my depression. (Sarcasm)

I understand what both of you are saying, but I think its disingenuous to assume that happiness is simply the opposite of depression.

[dyauspitr]

If you have your basic needs met, have no physical ailments etc. I would agree with you. Your statement applies to a certain subset of folks that are defeatist, pessimistic etc. but not everyone.

[balamatom]

Yeah, no.

What you're promoting is a deeply narcissistic worldview, and I hope either the cure or the consequences reach you soon.

Though maybe those are going to present as the same thing.

[braebo]

They’re not entirely wrong, and your comment is seemingly unhinged and unprovoked… but there’s a lot of literature on stuff like mindfulness, CBT, and the impact thoughts can have on one’s emotions, especially happiness.

[Scarblac]

I really don't see how your comment has to do with his at all. You're both talking about completely different things, I think.

[gverrilla]

Easy to say it's immaterial when you're probably an american or european with plenty of material comfort. When was the last time you didn't eat for lack of food, for instance? Adieu to logic, indeed.

[balamatom]

Please step right into this here experience machine, it won't hurt you one bit

[grugagag]

Luckily you can still pursue being a musician without all the pressure of having to be successful. On this road, one day you are free to declare your own success to yourself

[analog31]

Indeed. On the other hand, I also know my limitations, since roughly half the people I play with are pro's with music degrees. And I'm still trying to improve.

I'm inspired by the quote from Pablo Casals when he was in his 90s. They asked him why he still needed to practice, and he said: "Because I'm finally beginning to see some improvement."

[bitwize]

Maybe if the internet and piracy hadn't fucked artists over, they could have made decent money as a musician selling their work without having to be a major-label superstar. Alas, we do not live in that timeline.

[ghaff]

Did most artists (in whatever form) ever have a good living in and of itself?

[peterfirefly]

No. The best/luckiest did, at least some of the time. Most didn't.

[analog31]

Yes. Mostly, until relatively recently on a historical time scale. In the middle ages, musicians were employed by towns, and had a guild. They also worked for princes, the church, etc. I read an article saying that they often did double duty as cops on market days.

There was perhaps less of a distinction between "arts" and trades. People did all kinds of work on paintings, sculptures, etc., and expected to get paid for it. They rarely put their names on their works.

I've read a bit about Bach's life, and he was always concerned about making money.

One music history textbook I read identified the invention of printed music as the start of the "music industry." Before the recording era, people composed and published sheet music. There were pianos in middle class parlors, and people bought sheet music to play. Two names that come to mind were Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton. Movie theaters hired pianists or organists, though that employment vanished when talking movies came out. The musicians of the jazz era were making their livings from music. One familiar name is Miles Davis. His father was a dentist, and his parents considered music to be a respectable middle class career for their son. People did make a living from recordings before the Internet era. Today, lucrative work in the arts still exists for things like advertising and sports broadcasting.

(Revealing my bias, I'm a jazz musician).

In fact the expectation that an artist should not earn a decent living is kind of a new thing.

[analog31]

Ah, one of the luxuries of not having to support myself from music... I have no interest in making recordings. That audience means nothing to me.

[pixl97]

Right, before the internet the labels were great to artists!...

[Cthulhu_]

Piracy didn't fuck artists over I think (anecdotal), because it was the precursor to Spotify which has been great for artist discovery. Until the industry / artists caught on and started pushing shit. And the payment model for Spotify is bad, a million streams earns about $3-5K according to a quick google and few actually get that far.

But it's good for discovery, and artists generally don't make much off album sales either; concerts and merchandise is where it's at.

[rtpg]

Really still kicking myself for not majoring in robotics in school. I wanted to program, so I studied computer engineering but hadn't really absorbed that much in classes. But I will likely never have access to all the robotics stuff my school had, nor the guided learnings.

Never too late to try stuff out of course, but very little beats structured higher ed education in relatively small classes (think there was only about 24 people in the robotics major?)_

[speed_spread]

I worked with robotics engineers, their code and development methods were poor even though software is essential. You need both sides.

[peterfirefly]

Nothing beats concentrated work. You can do that without formal education. It might even be easier: you can probably afford pretty good arduinos and raspberries and H-bridges and sensors and actuators and...

It shouldn't be hard to go beyond what almost all universities provide.

[ghaff]

On the other hand, the one robotics course I took involved getting access to computers at 3am and doing horrific matrix multiplications by hand that took hours. Of course, this was a long time ago.