Why is Buying Pipes (on a Budget) So Difficult?

[Anonymous]

"cheap foreign competition" was not allowed to undermine the system that worked to everyone's balanced advantage. (And the lack of which, in Italy, economically annihilated Italian violinmaking when the farm--factory system got rolling in Mittenwald, Fussen & elsewhere there).

8)

:face:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Veet, to be fair, much of what I learned about making a hobby a profession was due to the double-edged sword of my own impatience and ignorance. I like to learn to reduce the ignorance (and learn I did) but the impatience made the look-before-one-leaps adage even more important. A life of learning-as-I-go has been beneficial, but time-consuming. Decision-making has never been one of my strong qualities, for better or for worse.

Plenty of folks can turn enjoyable hobbies into meaningful careers. I didn't have what it took. Reality check; coulda gone either way.

8)

 

[Vito]

Kyle:

Sorry for not being clear...I didn't mean to imply that turning a hobby (or an avocation, or a passion) into a profession is inadvisable, much less impossible. I've done it.

I was just referring to the fact that there are built-in traps that we often don't anticipate when we first imagine that it would be cool if something we like doing could be capable of earning us a living. It's one of those thangs that "looks good on paper"...but then one day when you find out that you're doing it because you have to do it, and not because you want to do it...uh-oh. :no:

 

[MisterE]

Kyle:
It's one of those thangs that "looks good on paper"...but then one day when you find out that you're doing it because you have to do it, and not because you want to do it...uh-oh. :no:

Word. Story of a professional musician, at times. Many weeks of hard-yet not-very-good music is a drain on the joy supply.

I replace "having to" with "getting to" to keep it in perspective.

 

[Vito]

Kyle:
It's one of those thangs that "looks good on paper"...but then one day when you find out that you're doing it because you have to do it, and not because you want to do it...uh-oh. :no:

Word. Story of a professional musician, at times. Many weeks of hard-yet not-very-good music is a drain on the joy supply...

Yep. That's exactly why I quit playing rock 'n' roll eight days a week. It got so old that I didn't even want to SEE a drumstick any more. Found a place to live way out in the country, holed up with my 4-track (it was 1973) and my instruments, and got back to actually creating real music. After a year of that I was ready to go back on the road.

Sometimes you've just gotta stop and get centered. :mrgreen:

 

[Rob_In_MO]

There was a guy I went to school with - Nathan - that always loved trees and plants. In high school he actually had his own vegetable garden at his Parent's house (yes, a high-schooler)...

In high school, a lot of us made fun of him for taking 'Landscape Horticulture' at the Vocational School. I ran into him 2years after graduation - he also went to work on Towboats running up and down the Mississippi River. He worked out there for 3-years, saving every penny he made ( he still lived at home) and then quit.

He, with the help of his parents, bought a medium-sized piece of ground right outside the city limits and put a used mobile home on it - where he lived for quite a while. Next to that he put up a greenhouse and went from there.

Today he works from home and runs a nursery/greenhouse, and hasn't worked for anyone since 1995.



Sorry for the long story, but sometimes these things do work out.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Fortunately due to the fickleness of both musicians and the music industry, I was never able to turn music into a career...I still love it as a hobby, though.

Computers, data and networks? Yeah, that's done. There's a reason most of those (us) guys tech-savvy enough to do something are better off alone. A room full of them (us) is pretty torturous. :lol:

In case anyone's wondering if I'm full of crap about all the stuff I've done for work, well, the full of crap part is true, but boy, the number of hats I've tried wearing to make a buck or two. And the stories to go with them... *sigh* I hope my stint as field geologist lasts a bit longer...I actually like this one for myself rather than the gleaming payoff and pure future aspect. Each moment is a treat, plus I get to work with my pops.

8)

 

[Anonymous]

(With apologies to those who are probably reading this for the third time. Not having very many actual insights into anything, I have to re-cycle the few I do have a lot.)

The first light came on in September of 1974. Birmingham (later, Alabama) Symphony. Beethoven's 9th. Second movement (woodwind coda where the fiddles lay out). Snuck a peek at my watch as un-noticeably as possible. Thought : "I sure hope this is over by 9:30, because I could really go for a pizza from Ziggy's, and they stop taking orders @ 9:45").

Little Voice in Head : "Welcome to the rest of your life. You blew everything else off to do this."

And that's the way it turned out that love & dedication stacked up against 9-5 reality.

Along with that came the flash-grasp comprehension that pretty much everybody is getting dressed up in some kind of costume for work, punching a time clock, and finding that the $/hr. figure is driving events.

:twisted:

FWIW (if anything)

:face:

 

[puros_bran]

People do what they are... eventually.

 

[Anonymous]

:scratch:

So you're a horse-wrangling trucker & I'm a past-retirement age prison hack ?

Appearances are a pretty grim perspective to see things from.

Maybe the WAY we do things more than the WHAT of it ?

:face:

 

[the rev]

most of the time in my life... when the magic stops, I move on to something else. There have been times when I was in a job that I hated, and couldn't quit, but those have been rare occurrences. But one was really bad, I was doing a construction remodel, and was working all by myself, which I am starting to like now but at the time was death for me. I remember waking up one morning and had a little twinge in my back, and I thought to myself... "I hope its a kidney stone so I don't have to go to work today" I made a change pretty quick after that. Good work should feed the soul

rev

 

[Anonymous]

And the other kind feeds the family.

:face:

 

[the rev]

when we assess our need to our wants, it doesn't really take much to feed the family. One year I made 12,000 we had two daughters, and never went hungry or without a roof.

I know lots of people that live off of much less than that. In a country that throws away 40% of its food, it is not hard to get by on next to nothing if you can get past the seduction of status

rev

 

[MisterE]

Snuck a peek at my watch as un-noticeably as possible. Thought : "I sure hope this is over by 9:30, because I could really go for a pizza from Ziggy's, and they stop taking orders @ 9:45").

:face:

I've been doing it for 23 years and I still do that from time to time! :roll:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Snuck a peek at my watch as un-noticeably as possible. Thought : "I sure hope this is over by 9:30, because I could really go for a pizza from Ziggy's, and they stop taking orders @ 9:45").

:face:

I've been doing it for 23 years and I still do that from time to time! :roll:

It's fickle human nature; more-figs-on-the-other-tree-syndrome. We can suppress it well with many tricks, but at the end of the day, often we are isn't usually where we want to be...and if it is, time will fix that, one way or the other. We spend a lot of time convincing ourselves much of the drudgery is for a reason. Age and time either teach us to simply tolerate or appreciate where we end up, then we die--and time wins again. Some figure it out. Some don't.

That's what makes it so lovely to say "eff this" and just go do something else, even if it's brief. Finish lines are for suckers, but achievement is quite personal. Templates for life mostly get in the way. Another reason why I probably still like being involved in music: I stopped reading it and started playing it...much more fun, much less profitable.

*shrug*

8)

 

[puros_bran]

:scratch:

So you're a horse-wrangling trucker & I'm a past-retirement age prison hack ?

Appearances are a pretty grim perspective to see things from.

Maybe the WAY we do things more than the WHAT of it ?

:face:

pretty much.