It's worth noting that even players of the skill level of Robert Conti sometimes take years off from playing to attend to their lives.

So many people today appear to confuse "music" and "the music business", as if they're one and the same. They are not, except by coincidence. If you can separate them in your own mind, then the question becomes more about what brings personal satisfaction to you as a person. Do we need people to tell us we're good players, do we need approval? Do we need to hear applause in some form?

If music is to be one's profession, then one needs the music business to survive. Most lifetime players ultimately survive by teaching music to others, not simply by playing and/or performing.

If music is simply a personal passion and pursuit, then it's more of a "spiritual" exercise and the satisfaction derived is its own end unto itself. In other words, the endorphins and dopamine our brains produce under the right circumstances provide a high level of emotional/intellectual satisfaction which may be all the fulfillment we need to experience.

Questions to ask include "Who am I doing this for?", "What am I trying to get out of this work and experience?", and "Is my musical satisfaction based on the reactions of others?".

Emulating other players and trying to learn what they are doing can be very rewarding. Creating your own sounds can be rewarding. BIAB is simply another tool and should not become a time vampire, the goal should be to spend as much quality time playing your instrument as possible and to learn as much as you can along the way. Software and electronics should not "cost" us learning time, they should only be used when they can enhance our learning process.

When we die, our recordings may or may not ever be heard again. Our instruments that we so love and cherish will be given away or sold off to others, maybe their new owners can play brilliantly and maybe they can't, but it will make little difference to us since we're dead.

The beauty of music is that it helps us to attain a "be here now" sort of state of consciousness, if we approach it with the desire that it will indeed do that.

In the end, all that matters is what and how we think and feel in the moment as we play. Everything you need from music is available in that moment, if we can find it.

There is no joy in comparing ourselves to others and why should we, other than to gauge where we're at and where we can go from there? Very poor music can earn a lot of dollars but that doesn't make it worth playing even if you can earn a lot of money doing it. Earning lots of money makes you a "musical success" in the eyes of many people, especially accountants. But, is there personal satisfaction and growth in that even though there is technical "success"?

I think that most of the players we admire and want to emulate were playing because they were addicted to the endorphins, dopamines, and all the rest of it that makes us as humans "feel" a certain way. The money and applause is simply gravy, certainly not the main course in their lives.

Play for your self, play because it makes you feel good. Play because it's fun and you can use the process of learning to develop as a person. If you are playing because you think it's the best way to pick up more chicks (or guys), you're possibly missing the point of what "music" is really all about. It's about your soul, whatever you envision that to be.

It's possible all the rest is illusion and delusion. If you can make yourself feel something worthwhile while playing then hopefully you can share it by playing it for others and they will get a similar feeling when they hear it.

There might not be much more to it than that.