I accepted an offer to switch from my first engineering job to what would have been my 2nd with a 25k+ pay bump. With some help weighing hypotheticals via the question "what's the worst that could happen?" with my therapist, I realized I could give in to my frustrations (with myself) and face my (unfounded) fears and pursue music as a career full-time. I am, and have been, financially able to do this. So I told job #2 I was changing course but maintained the course of leaving job #1. Turns out, taking the new job offer was the impetus I needed to make the break from job #1.
I just turned 37 and I've been playing guitar and writing songs since I was around 15. I studied music in college and then lived in Hollywood for a while where I studied guitar and audio engineering, played one-off gigs with people and played as a member of a few other bands (in some of which we wrote original music) --- but I never thought to pursue the songs I WROTE solo. They were a different style than what I played in the other bands and I thought they were "too sappy" and that I wasn’t good enough. I was paralyzed by feelings of unworthiness, inadequacy, and the fear of judgment.
Eventually I left the bands, moved back home to Chicago, did some part-time work and then got a sales job. I got sick of that, learned to code, and got a coding job, which I actually REALLY enjoyed (finally! Something I enjoyed doing that I was good at and that paid really well!). But something was STILL nagging at me. I went on a week-long retreat called the Hoffman Process. There I realized there was POWER in vulnerability and that my fear of vulnerability was keeping me from pursuing my music. Like magic, after turning my phone back on after the retreat, I received a message from a very close friend of a video he, for whatever fateful reason, dug up from Facebook of me playing a song I wrote back in 2009, this was 2019. I probably cried in that moment. It felt like the universe sending me a message. I watched and listened to the video of a 22-year-old me playing an original song and realized - my songs were GOOD! I found it so sad that I had written such good songs over a decade ago and let them fade into oblivion rather than honoring them, and myself, by recording and releasing and sharing them!
I started digging up all my old songs (turns out there were a lot!) and even writing NEW songs! I re-learned the old songs, practiced them, and after a year when I started getting anxious again, I started recording demos. When I started getting anxious once again a year or so later, I quit my coding job. I found a local studio and engineer and I've been recording for about a year. Now I'm mixing my first single and working on finding the balance between practicing music, studying music marketing, doing all the other work to "make it" as a musician, and general self-care. But one thing is for sure: no more wavering. I’m not going back to sales, coding, or switching to anything else. I am a musician, songwriter, recording artist, and whatever else this develops into.
On one hand, I regret and grieve the time I "wasted" being too scared to take this path. And on the other hand, this is my story. My story is now my "brand". It's my message. I want to inspire others, through my music and my voice in general, not to live in fear. Maybe saying "to find their passion" is too cliché, so I'll say to listen to their true, authentic selves and to honor that. To own their truth and empower themselves to stand up and have the courage to be vulnerable, different, potentially judged and even ridiculed or "canceled"! (You probably won’t be canceled.)
In recent years I've experienced chronic low-back pain, which is a story unto itself - yet it's 100% related. When we suppress our true selves, our true selves fight to come out, and that can translate to both psychological and physical manifestations. (I’ve also experienced depression and anxiety.) If I lost you here I'd strongly encourage you to keep an open mind. You don't grow as a human being by writing off anything that goes against your current paradigms - when I began to discover all of this, it certainly ran against mine. I expect most of this crowd to lean open-minded. If you're new to ideas like this, or curious to learn more, I would STRONGLY encourage you to read The Myth Of Normal, a very recent book by Gabor Maté. He is my current spirit animal.
I'm SO SO grateful to be on the path I'm on now and I have SO many people and experiences to thank. Not to mention the gratitude I have towards myself for getting myself to this point, for facing my fears, for honoring my truth. Maybe the transition from coding to music I described above sounded easy, but I assure you it was not. I was 36 and terrified to tell my parents! But they were super chill about it, and my dad even followed up to tell me how proud of me he was (happy tear)! NOBODY CARED. NOBODY TOLD ME I WAS AN IDIOT (one friend expressed some skepticism, but THAT’S GONNA HAPPEN! You need to have just enough confidence in yourself and can’t rely on the whole world to cheer you on! Both internal and external doubts are guaranteed, the secret to success is to plow ahead anyways! I am very well acquainted with doubt by now. Doubt comes to my parties uninvited and can’t be forced to leave. I have accepted this and I continue partying anyways.)
We all have fears around infinite things in our lives. When fear, anxiety, depression, chronic physical ailments, or even illness arises in you, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on what's happening in your life and in your thoughts, often well beneath the surface (this is rarely easy). Journaling is a great tool for me. Find your tools and use them. Honor yourself.
You don't have to "do something great," but I believe you should deeply and constantly examine your beliefs, the expectations you have for yourself, and the expectations that you believe others have for you. What do your parents expect for you? What does your partner expect of you? What do your friends, colleagues, children, or siblings expect of you? Is that even true? Is there evidence? What do you expect for yourself? Why??? Think about what you have wanted for yourself at different times in your life, especially when you were younger, before the pressures of our society began to disguise themselves as your own desires. If you’re looking for more inspiration, I suggest reading the book Mastery by Robert Greene. Sounds like OP has some other skills and interests which, if pursued, may lead to a source of potent intrinsic motivation which makes for great potential for eventual monetization.
Once you have an inkling of some path you think you might like to take, or that you wish you had taken years, maybe decades, ago, reflect more on that path and ask yourself "what's the worst that could happen?"