Being a musician is not a career path. It’s a life path. Unlike most jobs, you don’t stop being a musician the moment you walk through the door. Inspiration can strike you at very random hours at very unexpected moments and guess what? That’s work. So in essence, musicians never clock out. Equally, this calling they have makes it a lot easier for artists to feel like they’re fulfilling their life purpose and not just slaving away at a 9-to-5 job they had to take to cover their bills. Accordingly, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of 22 reasons (split into two articles of 11 reasons each) why being a musician is actually fun in life. Feel free to use the list to motivate yourself when you think of quitting!
11. You get to reinvent yourself all the time.
If most jobs require you to be rather invisible, being a musician requires you to be on the opposite spectrum of boredom (unless you are part of an orchestra that is). Aesthetically, you get to be who you want, when you want, and how you want. You can go bald overnight as a woman, tunnel your ears, and it would be deemed totally normal and cool for a music artist. Whereas if you were the CEO of a coding company and you did that, someone is bound to call the psychiatry ward.
10. You get paid to travel.
If you work hard enough and are good enough to get regularly booked for shows, you will reach fans beyond your local city and you will get paid to move around to share your talent. This must be one of the absolute coolest aspects of being a musician who’s made it to decent levels of notoriety. And trust us, you don’t need to be mega-famous to get paid to perform in other cities or countries. Just slightly past that unknown mark!
9. You leave intellectual property that will outlive you.
Musicians get to leave gifts that keep on giving especially if they made it to some level of success. A house doesn’t speak. A car does not always look as new. Stocks and bonds are not a spiritual compass. Photos don’t evoke the same depth of emotion. Whereas music does all of this and some!
8. You keep a sonic diary of who you are throughout life.
We all know an individual or two who uses their body as a tattoo journal and they are overly willing to share with you the story behind each and every work of ink. Songs are like the Horcruxes in Harry Potter that preserve the events, time, mood, artistry, tonality, in essence – a piece of your soul.
7. You’re a great communicator.
You wouldn’t be writing lyrics if you weren’t in touch with your feelings. Most musicians are incredibly self-aware and exceptional at expressing their emotional state. This makes them great partners in relationships and even great leaders in business environments for they know to read the room.
6. You likely can cope on your own without frequent therapy visits.
Because musicians deal with feelings as they come. They don’t let them pile up to consume them later (unless they’re underage and are not mentally equipped with the knowledge and tools to decompress). Transposing one’s sentimental turmoil into a creative outlet is therapy in and of itself. Writing lyrics is the equivalent of journaling at the indication of a psychologist.
5. You live by the very essence of self-discipline.
When you don’t have a boss to report to and an office to go to, you are left mostly to yourself and your ability to schedule each day efficiently so that you get things done. It is very tempting to start slacking when you’re at home and in your pajama. Workers have learned the hard way how vastly different office life is from remote work life and respectively, 39% of people gained serious weight during the pandemic according to Harvard University. Guess what happens when every day is remote day? You soon realize that your success, health, and progress depend on your time management and self-discipline skills.
4. You become well-versed in a myriad of topics.
Because you travel, because you likely had to work multiple jobs before achieving full-time employment in the music business, because you dated very interesting people, because you have a crazy life story, because you’ve seen life in more than one aspect – all of it makes you a worldly individual easy to talk to and find common ground with. Musicians are rarely ever the life of the party, but they almost always are the one guy/gal everyone likes and asks about the morning after.
3. You have very interesting friends.
Rarely ever will you find a more diverse palette of nationalities, ages, occupations, and religions than the pool of friends of a musician. Since they are extremely open-minded, artists don’t judge. They take the time to really know a person before deciding whether they like them or not and have a strong tendency to strike friendships with people completely opposite to their own nature.
2. You have uncommon memories in uncommon places.
No other job can offer you the privilege of saying you shook hands with the drummer of X band before going on stage. Or that you got to perform for a thousand people while it rained outside. Or that you shot a music video at a presitigious museum. Whatever it is that you lived in your life thus far as a musician, it is very likely you have the most interesting stories by far to share.
1. You learn the meaning of life rather early in life.
Some people must go through the whole cycle before realizing that life is about connections. They go to school, college, then university, get the corporate job, make money, make a family, and end up trapped in overworking culture since the media wants us to crave the latest cars, products, insurance plans, and by the time they’re 60, they realize none of it is worth it other than the memories they’ve created with their loved ones and other people. Life is about other people. Seriously. The experiences you had with other folks are just about the only precious thing you get to keep when you die. Well, guess what? Musicians can’t grow a career without connecting with their fans and appreciating each and every single one of them FIRST.
Blue Rhymez Entertainment ©2023
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