“Making It” in a Career

…a career is often a long, slow, marginally rewarding slog to a middle place and there is no finish line. You are living the dream, you are putting out your own records, you are touring (by water and by land!) with bands that have had multi-decade careers of ups and downs in metal; that’s not a bad career model at all. Appreciate all that you have achieved, resist the idea that there is a magic path and if you trod it properly your dream will come true and your career will feel very different even if nothing at all changes.

Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, and has toured internationally. She also has an advice column at LA Weekly called “Ask Fan Landers,” where musicians write in to ask her everything from whether or not it’s a good idea to manage your spouse’s band, and what to do when one of your band members is always drunk. Her column this week addresses “making it,” which can really be applied to any job really — this idea that we want to cross that imaginary line in our careers we set for ourselves to feel like we’ve finally “made it.” [via]

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