If there is a better community to ask this question, I’m all ears.
I majored in history because I like history. With a major like mine without a doctor thesis you can only work as a teacher and children are mostly idiots. You could try academia, but the ROI here is so much below zero it doesn’t make any sense.
As a child I was musically gifted but my parents never considered music as something worth following or studying. As an adult I bought me a classical guitar 12 years ago and a grand piano 5 years ago and started playing. I learned to play both instruments on my own.
Don’t think for a moment my technique is good enough to start studying at a conservatory for either instrument. I already rehearsed for a piano professor and he told me I must have invested an insane amount of time, that my technique is simply not good and if I want, he knows of 2 colleges that offer preparatory courses I could attend to.
I work as a firefighter and none of my coworkers even suspects I majored in history or that I’m capable of playing any instrument, it’s something I don’t talk about with any of them because I don’t believe they would understand and they’d start with intrusive questions I hate (if you are so talented like you claim and have a major in history, why are you wasting your time as a firefighter?). I already tried to find a decent job with history and failed. It’s something I don’t want to repeat with a possible major in music. Firefighting, as tiring and unfulfilling as it is, pays my bills and has given me a financial independence I never had, but I never saw myself here.
The curious thing is I have enough money to stop working and covering tuition fees and lodging for 4 years plus the preparatory year, but I don’t know if choosing this path would be the stupidest of decisions ever made. If I work part time, I don’t have to spend my whole savings.
Working as a firefighter I feel I’m wasting my life, I don’t want to be a firefighter till I retire, but this job has given me financial stability and I dread losing that.
I do my job and when I’m not very tired at home after doing the laundry, buying food and cooking, cleaning my apartment, walking a bit to disconnect… I play. It brings me joy but as of now it’s only a hobby. To even monetize it I would have to at least have a bachelor.
Is this what it looks like?
If it’s a job that affords you the ability to still be able to enjoy the things you want to do, then it’s definitely not a wasted life. The worthiness of life isn’t defined by the way we earn money.
That being said, if you’re looking for other jobs that are maybe less taxing so that you can have more time to enjoy your life, and if you can afford it, you could go do something easier for sure. (I certainly wouldn’t classify fighting as an ‘easy’ job). The security guys at my work get to do whatever basically for 10 of the 12 hrs they work, one guy is writing a book, the other guy learned different languages. You could try something like that? And then if you have energy after you can go to open mics or something to get your musical talent out in the world without feeling stressed about needing to make money off it.
Yes open to open mike, and no sense in pursuing a Bachelor in order to make money from music. That would only be required if you want to apply to an orchestra position, and accept that the amount of people that studied music 6h per day over several years is much higher than you think.
There are many ways to make money out of music, and most don’t pay the bills. Guess what most musicians do? Teach.
There’s nothing wrong with working a job only to pay the bills and seeking fulfillment outside of work. I love my hobbies, but I wouldn’t want to try and monetize them because they’re for my enjoyment, and turning them into a job would sap all that enjoyment out.
I think society (at least in the USA) has failed the younger generations in that regard. I remember being in school in the 90s and 00s and being told repeatedly to go to college for something you enjoy and are passionate about (also you need a 4 year degree, but that’s a different conversation). You definitely aren’t a failure for working a career that falls outside of your passion(s). Ask yourself what your end goal is for pursuing music as a career. Is that goal unattainable by pursuing it outside of work?
Fortunately for me, one of passions is programming computers, which pays a lot of money. After spending eight hours a day programming computers - who am I kidding? I can’t program my computer eight hours a day - Never could. Fortunately, my company gives me several hours of meetings every day and so I can program computers in between and not get burned out. There is the reality of having your passion and your job being the same type. You’re gonna get burned out. There will be times when you have to do things that are boring and tedious and you can’t put it off until later when you find the energy.
Fortunately, I have multiple passions. When I get home at the end of the day, I couldn’t possibly sit down and program anymore, but I can cook a good meal for my family every day. Even cooking I have to clean up after myself, which is, let’s just say, not something I enjoy. Often the rest of my family will help clean up, but I have to take a part of that.
I’ve been playing mandolin for almost 30 years now. I regularly hear someone who is actually good at mandolin playing. I’m just jealous at how good they are. But the reality is, because it’s my passion, but it’s just something I’m an amateur at, I don’t have to be good. I can skip doing those three octave major scales. Many people are better than me - Many of them haven’t been alive for 30 years and yet they’re a lot better than me. But I can tell by listening to them play that they haven’t skipped a lot of the practice that I’ve skipped over the years. But that’s okay because this is just a passion and if I don’t feel like it, well, I don’t have to feel like it.
So my question is, what is your budget like? And what is your personal passion for piano? If you love piano, there are a ton of online study programs in piano. There are a lot of local music teachers who can teach you piano, the parts you’re missing. Firefighter isn’t the best income, but I’m sure that you could throw other parts of your life away and thus come up with the money to take a degree in piano.
You can probably find a local college that is willing to give you a music major for a small price. And since this is just something you’re doing for fun, you don’t have to do that piano degree in a couple years. You can take eight years to get a piano performance major (that is, as a part-time student, only take two or three credits a semester). There is nothing wrong with that because it’s not going to be your income in the future anyway.
Do you really want to though? It’s an option to get the music major, but you have other options. You are perfectly justified in saying, “you know what, I could do that, but I’m not actually interested in it. I’m going to do something else at a time”. Maybe you decide, piano is interesting but taking up too much time and you get yourself a tatting shuttle and learn another hobby which is even more useless than any of the others. More power to you. Or you can start on the piano major and along the way you discover that there’s some required class in something that turns out to be become a new passion for you that also turns out to pay a lot of money in so suddenly you switch majors to and you find a new job. Great if it happens and if it doesn’t, well who cares you already have a career
I’m not in your shoes, but I gotta be honest, of all the useless jobs out there, firefighter is not one of them. I’m not trying to tell you you should find it fulfilling, simply that in my eyes at least, it’s a worthy role.