I think you need to take the time and evaluate what you really want to achieve and how you think it would be best to make those goals happen. The balancing act between artistic aspirations and financial reality is always a tricky one.
I understand the dilemma you find yourself in with how you view yourself in the 9-5 working world and your place in it. Having a day job does not mean you are less of an artist. There is no text book right or wrong way to do what you want to do. If you are able to balance both then all the power to you.
I don’t know all the details of your situation but I get the feeling that you are passionate about your craft and would say that you shouldn’t give up on something you love because of the place you currently find yourself in.
Take a break and embrace your corporate career for a while. Forget the complexities of making music. If your dreams are turning into a fever-dream, then you deserve a holiday from your dreams.
Somewhere in the sleepwalk of corporate life you’ll work it all out, have an epiphany and make music or buy a horse ranch.
Much wisdom here. I would summarize much of it as trying to maximize intrinsic (within one’s self) motivation and reward, as opposed to extrinsic (determined by others, often for their own benefit). We have much less control over the judgments of others, which can be unfair or irrational. But we have more over our own, even if it has to be “this is what I need to do to get through the day / put food on the table / co-exist with other people”. Hopefully it can be more than that, and we can experience satisfaction and enjoyment from what we do, whether for work or play.
Then you absolutely made it IMO! Damn, you literally worked with some of the best to ever do it. Huge respect (and I want to hear!) also I’m late to the party but really enjoying working my way through your YouTube content
i like this.
ultimately, as we all abandon our Angus Young hopes in life, it is very freeing once we let go of whatever seed put us on the paths we feel we are on.
If you take your job and music out of your current playbox, what else is in there?
You may be missing some things right in front of you that you should nurture … that may help make your job and music take new directions.
Re: the OP…
Kerouac was, to be as kind as possible, a somewhat contradictory and confused individual, but some of his Rules for Writing/Rules of Spontaneous Prose stuck with me for some reason and the most notable one is this:
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
I don’t know what it means but of course I do know what it means at the same time. It’s nonsense but complete sense.
Music can be a very conscious, calculated process for some people (and in some situations) and that’s fine, but it doesn’t have to be. Making noises is fantastic and sometimes that’s all making music needs to be. Remember the joy of sounds and live in that space for a while. Recapture that childish wonder (beginners mind, you could say) or at least allow yourself to visit places where music can do that for you again. It could be wandering around the place with a microphone and recording noises; it could be playing with instruments in ways you’ve never done before (if its conventional instrument, try to imagine how it could be played differently to how you play it - perhaps bu somebody who had never encountered it before).
Let yourself have fun making joyful noises.
If things in your life make you unhappy, fuck them off.
Be fucking ruthless, you’re not here for long enough to be wasting time on things that make you unhappy.
“It’s not the destination it’s the journey” – in my opinion this platitude is something spouted by those that don’t set realistic goals for themselves.
If you set realistic goals, you will succeed in everything you do. If you must, have some ‘stretch’ goals…if you hit those you are money, if you don’t, well you probably learned something about yourself in the process, which will be valuable for the next round of the fight.
Why did you start playing music in the first place? To be a ‘pro’ you say. What does this mean? Is there some magic income number that makes you ‘pro’? We all have different needs. The “pro” busker plays music in the town square every day for a ‘living’ – he’s ok living in a shared flat and eating canned beans every day. What kind of income do you need to be comfortable? Is it realistic to earn that as a musician?
Try and re-frame your outlook a bit. If you don’t like your job now…is there a different job you’d like more (maybe one that is easier to attain than pro musician)?
good luck
Honestly OP, maybe take a break? There was a period of my life where my perfectionism and the pressure of wanting to make music that felt like it outclassed my skills really got to me, and I found myself beginning to really hate music. Not just making it, but listening to it too. Every time I sat down at a DAW I wasn’t playing around or having fun like I was when I started, I was battling with my own ego. I couldn’t listen to other music sometimes without thinking the whole time about things other artists did better, or how I had no idea how they were doing some of the things I was hearing. It was a really rough period. So, I stopped. I filled my time with other things, met new people, tried new stuff. Focused more on what seemed like a more “viable” career path.
This probably sounds like it was refreshing, the ironic thing was, it wasn’t at all. The total opposite, in fact. I found myself incredibly depressed that I wasn’t working on music. It was ironic, this thing that I started hating became this thing that I was upset that I wasn’t getting better at, and I realized that I was sad that it wasn’t at the center of my life the same way it used to be. That depression served as a wake up call, though.
I realized even if I’m never the best in the world, or reach the lofty goals I maybe had when I started out, in some way, I HAVE to be around it. It made me realize how the activity itself was important to me and kept me happy, not necessarily the ideals and goals I was pressuring myself with, but just the act of… well, making music. Eventually I rebuilt a healthier relationship with myself and while I’m still a bit of a perfectionist, I can detach a bit and know that everything comes in time.
This probably sounds like it was an awful experience, and you’d probably wonder why I’m recommending you stop making music for a while after reading this, but seriously. I needed the wake up call to realize I was prioritizing the wrong things and to find where my passion with music actually was. Maybe you need to do the same. It’s like a relationship, if it’s not working out, let it go, but if it’s meant to be it’ll come back to you and you should hold it tight!
Cool! 
ll send you some links later today.
Dont give up
Just let go
keep going on
That being said, a change in career can change your life.
never give up on music.
love it, and it will never leave you when everything else has
I haven’t read this this whole thread so I apologise if I’m repeating what others have said.
All I can add is that you don’t have to do something professionally in order to enjoy it. I started coding when I was very young and I got “bitten by the bug” and carried on. I’ve been lucky enough to turn it into a profession but I don’t enjoy it nearly so much now and doing something under time and money pressure is a sure way to milk the enjoyment out of anything. Some days I absolutely hate it and I’ve quit jobs etc, but that’s just par for the course in life. Nobody is happy every day.
I’ve known a few professional musicians and most of them had to fall back on a so-called “day job” because they couldn’t make a decent living. But they were able to do something else for money and also enjoy music and also sometimes make money from that too. So a balance can be found.
The point of this rambling post is that 99% of people ultimately work so they can pay for the rest of their life. It’s a decent system that works well a lot of the time! I agree with whoever said that we’ve all been fed a modern fantasy that you have to “do what you love” and I even have a water bottle with that written on it from when I worked in a WeWork office. It’s a lie, and the pressure of feeling like you have to enjoy your job or that it has to be your passion is just BS that helps employers advertise themselves on LinkedIn.
If you can make a living doing something that’s doesn’t drive you too mad and enjoy your hobbies and the other parts of your life then you’ll be doing pretty well. Spend a little time thinking what else you might be able to do for a living. We’re all capable of more than we first realise.
Good luck and don’t get too down, there are always options in life.
We must suffer for our sins. All this gear lust and shopping has to be punished. 
Started burning out way back in 2015. Kept tryna force it for the next few years but things just kept getting worse to the point where I was “fuck it, i hate this - I’m done”. At that point it wasn’t just music I didn’t seem to be enjoying, it was everything. Some sort of anhedonia bullshit.
Anyways, at some point I finally figured out where I was going wrong. Spending all my free time focusing on music and very little else had gotten in the way of having anything that could be called a life. While original plans may have also lacked any real purpose they at least came with a sense of optimism that even if all else was to fail, the identity of “artist” might turn out to be its own reward. But sadly such an identity turned out to be a curse and my sense of self slowly eroded until I became nothing more than an occasional creator of bleeps and bloops; and not very good ones at that.
Whatever happened to getting out there and exploring the world? Climbing mountains and hiking for hours on end just to see a waterfall? Long drives in the countryside with no destination except maybe there’d be some sort of bakery along the way that does a reaaly good meat pie? Or laying on the loungeroom floor in front of the stereo with one of those many albums that have always sent me to another world? Twelve year old me would be pretty fucking ashamed of my complete failure as an adult to do fun and interesting things.
So in the end I did say “I’m done”. And I started climbing mountains and going on long drives and swimming at the beach. And I read all sorts of books on all sorts of topics and pared down my music collection to those few hundred albums that could bring me the most joy. I took up boxing, read holy books, visited churches and synagogues and even almost got trapped in a cult (don’t recommend that last one). And somewhere along the way I slowly started to become a real person again. Someone who can now stomach the idea of making bleeps and bloops for no other reason that I might enjoy it.
Tldr: how full is your tank?
Also, professional mix engineers exist for a reason.
i second this.
once i took a break from music that lasted about 6 or 7 years.
i’m even afraid to think what it would be if i tried to keep myself motivated.
If you have to put in effort to stay interested then drop it. You could spend your whole life miserably chasing something only for the illusion to disappear in front of your eyes and something more fullfilling gets left ignored.
I’ve mentioned this before but I have been musically unmovtivated for a long time (I used to be a sound designer and composer for video games). It made me miserable for ages and then I just decided to stop telling myself I should be better at music and found different passions that I actually enjoy. I reconnected with cooking which I think is my real passion. I also got back into drawing and sketching: I used to be fairly decent as a teenager but sort of lost the confidence and now I do at least one drawing a day and just share it with some friends, not for The Likes but just to disconnect the joy I get from doing the sketches from any sort of imagined worth of someone else’s opinion.
In short: spend time doing things you enjoy. You won’t get an opportunity to try again.
There‘s always two sides to every story. I‘ve had a pretty good glimpse into the life of professional musicians as a light and sound tech working at a venue that has artists from all around the world and all kinds of genres. Tour life is hard and a lot of joy goes down the drain when you have to perform even when you don’t feel like it or maybe even when your body needs rest but you just have to… it’s the same wether you‘re a performing musician or a producer who is able to make a living from it. The only difference is the work environment.
I‘ve been many times where OP is at right now and even though I don’t have a clear and easy solution for our problem I can only confirm that taking a break is the best idea. Start by taking care of yourself in terms of creating healthy habits like cooking and choosing your ingredients wisely (and more importantly: cut the crap! No junk food, no heavily processed food etc). I‘m a sugar addict and always battle with the temptation and when I have a phase again where I lose the battle I can totally see a difference in retrospect when I‘m on a better path again in how much effect it has. The difference in the way of thinking, self awareness and self respect is HUGE! Food is the fundamental need we all rely on and if the fundament is bad the rest of the building will suffer from it.
And if music is not resonating with you right now take a look around and see what sparks your interest. Good thing is that if you already spent a considerable amount of time on developing a skillset then you’ll have a headstart into whatever other thing you might choose as the approach is basically the same every time.
Hi, you’ve attracted my first post 
Not the same, but in lockdown, like so many of us performers - the sense of having to pick oneself up and dust oneself down and start over is bloody daunting. In my “day” band job I’m actually a mandolinist and in the lockdown i have barely played it. Coming back to it the last couple of weeks in rehearsal has felt really wonderful.
I think it’s worse when you’ve built up a following in the past, we have done the same, but not to supporting names - just good big sized festivals. But it’s still a step up from bedroom/pub/fleapit and at my advancing years, it’s gonna be hard for me to push forward beyond the band’s life.
Anyways, my point - what you are probably feeling is a mix of circumstance, but most importantly some musical burnout - don’t ever try and push through burnout - take a break until you feel the mojo return.
Also, this lockdown business has really affected us all so deeply, everything has changed etc… and it has brought things like “why am I doing this dull corporate life?” to our attention - made us really question it. I hate that the traffic outside is normal again. I like that I can work from home at my caravan in Cornwall (thanks Dad, RIP)… I for one dread the idea of a daily commute, sure once a week or whatever, but not five days with all the angry drivers on commute.
I’ve had my own struggles with mental health in lockdown, and aside from that (which I’m being treated for successfully), but the positives have been epic. I’ve re-found electronic music alongside my folk leanings… that’s really exciting…! That’s why i’m here obviously
So why my life story stuff?
It’s to say, in a roundabout way - be kind to YOU - look at the GOOD - and be patient because, once you’re a musician you NEVER stop. Take time. Let it back in when you’re ready. I used to be a bedroom muso… and late in life I found a whole new tribe and live music with it. It can change.
I tell you now, there’s really no such thing as giving up - just changes in life and priorities - you don’t have to be successful you just have to ENJOY it for what it is
Not much I can add here but I’ve been in this situation many times and only recently learned the way forward: learn too stop caring so much. It took a while but now I enjoy making music and art without pressure. Also: only make the music that interests you - if you start making it based on what other people think it loses it’s integrity. If you’re overwhelmed by the complexity of the music you’re making strip down your setup and set strict limits such as only 4 tracks on one machine and explore it to the limits. This outlook forces you to play and experiment more which is when the magic happens. Aphex Twin is a good example of less is more - listen to Windowlicker, there’s only like 4 things happening in the track. If you’re unhappy with your career take a step back, don’t care so much about working for someone else, find a skill you’re good at and setup on your own. Alternatively retrain - it’s never too late. I have a mate who’s 55 and doing a uni degree to retain as a psychotherapist. I’m 44 and in the process of flipping my life upside down.
GOOD LUCK
Yes. This.