I wrote about this at length some time ago, but all of that can be condensed to:
"What would you do if you could redo your life?"
Go back to that day, the one when you picked the major that put a degree on your wall, or the day you decided not to go to college, or the day you decided to do something "practical" just to pay bills (and then never got out of the rut). If you could do something different on that day, what would it be?
The answer given at 18 will be much different than your answer at 25 and even more so at 30. A friend put it: "Well, I would have skipped college and just toured with my band. We might actually be something now if we had tried. But then, I wouldn't be here, and I'm happy with my life." (working a steady job, married and about to own a home.)
No sense in fixing what isn't broken, if you're happy where you ended up, stay with it. But what if you're not happy. What if you've tried, for at least 5 years, to make something work and it just doesn't. When you spend 40+ hours a week thinking that you're wasting time on something that isn't important no matter how big your salary.
At 18 I would have said "I'm going to Oberlin and getting a piano performance degree."
At 25, "Can't do engineering full time, can't do piano full time. I'm going into music engineering or music business."
At 30, "Going back to academia, and staying there. Yes, I still want to be a rock star, but that's not going to happen. Let's start with vocal performance. Maybe I'll just teach theory or history or something..."
Next, how do you make it happen?
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