Low expectations ftw?
Become a coroner. People aren’t going to stop dying anytime soon.
Low expectations ftw?
For what it’s worth, I am where I am now (i.e., nowhere), because I aimed very high without a good backup plan and misread my own character at a young age, failing to realize that seeking a career as a movie director didn’t really play to my strengths. I still think I would be a good director but I also think I am not built the way you have to be built in order to pursue such a career with the rigor & obsession & persistence that it takes.
Meanwhile, people I knew who took more conventional, “boring,” or “unambitious” career paths, are now successful professionals who are buying homes, who make anywhere from 2 to 6 times as much as I do, and who do not take medications in order to stave off panic attacks and suicidal depression.
The world is populated with a lot of idiots like me who thought they were gonna set the world on fire because they were so goddamn talented, but they couldn’t hack it and by the time they came to terms with that fact, they were at best playing desperate catchup, or at worst lost forever.
This doesn’t apply to everyone, but I think it is fair warning. Shooting for the moon is not necessarily the wisest approach. Or if you do shoot for the moon, set a timeline for yourself and figure out a good Plan B.
Cool. You should check out CS/IT programs at schools in your area. My advice is to avoid the “IT Mills” where they promise to make you a fully certified Microsoft Engineer earning $80K in only 6 months (and at a cost of $20K). While it’s true you actually could get certified in that short amount of time, it will be very difficult to get employed as anything other than an entry level help desk person (hourly) with that background.
Whatever you choose, good luck and I hope it works out well for you.
edit: this is a response to Gord.
Exactly. 20 years ago when I went to film school I wanted to be a filmmaker. But it took me a decade to figure out my strengths and my personality, and subsequently, my place in the industry. I’m much better suited to being an editor than a director. I get to solve problems having to do with theme and subtext and tone, and I get to do it in a fairly solitary manner.
Few people know who they are at 20, and your film school should have made sure you learned out to record sound or edit picture or anything on top of script structure and performance.
Not so longwinded… for a writer!
I don’t believe an alternative exists.
Sure there is. Some days I hate coming in to work but some days it’s not so bad and after a bad weekend or something it can be a nice comforting routine and I actually look forward to it a little bit.
Eh? I’m not seeing how low expectations relates to what I said.
and your film school should have made sure you learned out to record sound or edit picture or anything on top of script structure and performance.
It did, in a general way and on outdated equipment. They had us cutting on moviolas from the 1940s for god’s sake. I don’t know how it is now, but in its trade/vocational dimensions, SC Cinema/Television was criminally inadequate in the 1990s.
Yeah, we learned on KEM Flatbeds and Moviolas, but years later I went back to school to learn to use the Avid.
And the Nagra folks had to go learn how to use a DAT. It’s never too late :)
Reinsurance and/or the finance industry, if you don’t mind doing something that is both boring and stressful, has the best money.
If I were starting over again, I’d be a professional musician. Because it took me until now to understand how to be successful at it. I never could have made it if I’d started fresh out of High School (or earlier, as many musicians’ careers do).
OK, I’ll bite: How do you be successful at it?
At a guess, networking, social and marketing skills. It’s who you know, not what you know.
To make a long story fit into a single quickly-written response on a messageboard, you approach it the same way you approach any small business or contracting work. Musicians have the same problem as engineers (and even most doctors and lawyers), in that they think the cream will always rise to the top of its own accord, that you just need talent and a good work ethic (and sometimes, they even forget about the work ethic).
People in music get afraid of being called “sellouts,” but as anyone who listens to Tool would understand, the minute you’ve sold one ticket or one record or one t-shirt, you’ve sold out, and it’s just a matter of how much.
NOT TRUE. BLINK 182 WERE MASTERS OF THEIR INSTRUMETS.
<insert insult questioning your sexual orientation>
That is one important part of the complete balanced breakfast including salesmanship and a good work ethic.
But “who you know” is a matter of knowing how to get to know people more than it is being born knowing the right people. It’s nothing you can’t learn from a quick read of How to win friends and influence people, and then once learned, you practice it every day until just out of habit you find yourself doing it with the right people.
What you’re describing is a “working” musician. And, sure, you can eke out a living in cover bands or jazz trios doing by approaching it like a general contractor, if that’s all you want from music. But that’s not exactly my definition of “successful”.
I have one friend who is a bassist and another who plays the trumpet. Both do session work and are successful (with or without the mystifying scare quotes) by anyone’s definition.
There’s a lot of work on the continuum between busker and Bono.
Fair enough.