Two different strategies come to mind:
A) Work part-time, each day, with a regular schedule. Keep the morning for composing, the afternoon for regular job.
B) Schedule all the work in a bundle of weeks or months, then plan a few weeks for composing. No break allowed. Clients already informed in advance.
Contract with your principals or clients. Be very clear in making your composing time non-breakable. Make sure your time is yours.
I guess you are younger than me. So, I would suggest: don't think you need a lot of money. You need what is needed, and can spend less when income is slow. Money will never be enough, but time is much more important, and ends sooner.
Paolo
Well this is a long time objective but right now, where I live, working part time is not so good for pay taxes and many other fees our country charge us with!
My wife works too but she looked for a job for 5 years. I'd like to work part time but I can't right now and I have to deal with what I have. This is why I'm trying to "optimize" my work and my time asking here and there what other people do, so I can make a statistics and try understand better what direction I have to follow.
I don't want a lot of money, I'd like to have enough to live a good life. Here from our salary they take 30% (or more) and we have to pay a lot of taxes, the life is very expensive too.
Thank you so much for your advice, I'll put it in my bag.
I can only tell you what I'm doing, but maybe it helps.
I'm 33, make music for a little more than half my life. Trying to get a composer career going (currently libraries, and try the occasional short). I am an EIS student to get my theory knowledge up (under our dearest Farkle).
So, what's the rest?
- I work part-time (80%) at a university as researcher
- I have 20% (one day a week) for composition stuff (not counting weekends)
- I purchased gear from my salary to future-proof myself, because once I go fulltime, because chances are I cannot afford gear then
- I save as much money as I can, keeping my living standards low. Goal: be able to survive 2-3 years with 0 income while keeping the current living standard
- I married about three weeks ago - a wonderful and supportive woman. Currently, she is finishing her studies (no or little direct income), and we both are clear on the composing stuff - when I go fulltime, she is ready to bring in the cash that I do now.
There we go, future plan. That ties up in:
- I make music every day, be it 30 min or 3 hours
- I have one full day for music alone, plus 2 weekend days which I can fully use if I want
- I don't chase after gear for hours - I have all I need to make a living from that side, and I don't have enough to upgrade (only keep it running and repair if needed)
So - there's your time. All the planning above enables me to go forward, get better, get gigs and still maintain a "healthy enough" work-life balance.
Listen to your body. Make yourself a schedule if you need to, to block out "composing time" each day - let's say, the hour after dinner is reserved for you, and one evening (a couple hours) as well. In the longer time blocks you compose and refine your craft, in the shorter ones you listen, learn and get more knowledge (listen to good music, Analyse good music, maybe transcribe a bar or two). Yes, it takes some time, but that way I think you can get far as well.
Most important is work life balance. Spend time with your loved ones, or quality time with yourself (gaming, TV, whatever). Time is a resource, and like money, when the bank account gets empty, it will get tough.
Thank you.
Luckily I have a very supportive and good wife too!!
I could build my little studio thanks to her and I know I have to work to buy staff I need. I don't know if I'll do music as a profession but I know I want to spent less time working with chaos and stress every second.
You're right I should spend my time with my loved ones and maybe just resting and do something else sometime.
P.S. I'm 33 too. :D
Ear training, and improvising are great investments of your time. 20 minutes of focused ear training (transcribing) each day will give you steady progress.
This will be my last post here, so let me offer one last diatribe.
Be careful of being the man walking himself down the street on a leash.
You were the one who made the agreement with your work. You either have to change
(I don't mean quit either: there can be a medium without going extreme) something, or find peace with what you have.
Let me ask you a question: How much time have you spent in this thread replying to messages ?
How much time per day do spend on here, or browsing the internet to relax ?
Could your time of been better just composing ?
The price for learning any skill is attention. Time is apart of that, but the "I don't have time" is an illusion. All we have is time. It's our attention that wonders.
If you find you have internet addiction or can't get motivated, get a teacher or a friend whom you meet in person regularly with and set clear goals with accountability.
Other than that.....nothing anyone can say will make the difference.
All the best
Why are you talking of not posting here anymore? I think it is legit to have some question like this in mind and answering them could be useful to many other people that are trying to make their way in life and music.
I always asked myslef these questions, could I have spent my time better than this? I remember the university days when I keep distracting from my studies...
But then I saw that I passed the exams and do it well too in my own way, I then realized that we are all different and if someone else spent eight hours to do something and I spent two hours to do it my way there's not right or wrong way (always remaining within certain boundaries) to do something.
I have an addiction to learning, many things actually, so I often watch videos or read things on internet or on books. I think that reply to people that spent their time to help me is first of all a good behavior then I think that a good discussion is another way of learn things and trying many ways to learn things it is a good thing (forget my simple language, I'd like to be more specific).
So I'm not seeing this as "loosing time" but more as "invest the time". I always feel richer when I came from this kind of discussions.
You're right about time but my complain is more like a "I'd like to have more time to do what I love", and I know my brain enough to say this. So I'm trying to live with that limit and I'm trying to know if other people with the same "problem" as me have developed some ways to achieve the best result.
It's not a problem of motivation, it's more about find the right way for me. I'm trying to live with short, medium and long range objectives.
Right now I have this and I'd like to understand what I could do with this.
Also, in the end I think that some time spent in relaxing after a day of work is not a bad thing at all.
It's not so easy trying to explain all things I'd like to say but I hope you understand...