Originally Posted by dalnet22

Good post, ngdawg. I certainly do not hold what I said in the OP to be my mantra. I wanted to hear some other opinions, and I like what you said.

Part of my struggle is that I am a musician. I record music, but I feel like aesthetics should be a small portion of my life. I feel like I should be helping the world in a more practical way, such as working as a psychologist in schools. That's why I'm applying to graduate schools for a PhD.

The other part of me knows that I am a very, very good lyricist. If I put all my eggs into the music basket, I think I have a chance at a successful career. But, it's a rather selfish one, where I make a lot of money and spend time not really helping anybody.

I'm going to have to try doing both, I guess. But it almost seems like aesthetics are a colorful release of our abilities. I don't know if our abilities should go 100% into something so relatively trivial. The reason I say 100% is because the top musicians put most if not all of their focus into their music.