Agree 100% with this and I also think the default mindset of "being heard and appreciated / make some money out of this" is very recent and only from the last (or two) decade(s).

In the past learning a skill and do something was mostly for pleasure, and something that would stay in your inner circle of friends. Maybe one of your friends would tell his other group of friends but that would be it.

Now internet gave us the opportunity to reach the whole world and that changed the expectations.

Can't agree with this more. I also started learning guitar and producing music very recently. I have no interest in getting heard and appreciated (on most days atleast).

It has been a tremendously rewarding journey to create new music and see myself improve. 10/10 would do again.

> the samurai must not care

Definitely recommend to OP to explore the modern warrior philosophy drawing from bushido.

It makes you wonder.

Walk into any library, book store, second hand shop or wherever they sell media. Look at the hundreds of thousands of book, albums, DVD and I wonder how many of those folks were doing it trying to make it big, grab attention or turn it into a career?

And that is a very VERY tiny slice of the entire pie. For everyone successful artist you find, there are hundreds or thousands that never got lucky or had the skills to make it. I put luck first deliberately.

A good example, based on the IBSN listings there are currently 158 million unique books. That is one unique book for every 53 people on the world, how many can you think of?

I love going to old book stores and pulling out something random, usually some paper back from the mid 60's/70's on a topic you probably never even thought of. How much time and effort went into writing that, editing, producing, marketing it? I look up the authors to if they ever made much of it all, about 99% of the time, their name doesn't turn anything up. Despite their published works, they could still be alive, they are already forgotten under the sheer volume of works out there.

There are TV shows I remember, they had whole crews working on it, actors, writers and producers. The only proof they exist online is about a paragraph or two, didn't even get a wiki page. To be appreciated by those close to you, that should be more than enough, but for some it has to be broader, I do not know why.

I think a part of it is that many people come into this world thinking it is a race. I say, IF and that is a very big if; if life is a race, it is a 100meter race and it doesn't matter what position you come in. Saunter your way, take the long way. And yet when you get to the finish line there are loads of people racing past mocking you and desperately trying to convince that "You think that is the finish line? Nah, this is marathon and the real goodies are there!". And so they keep running as fast as possible, wearing themselves out and getting exhausted to no end. The joke being that there is no other finish line.

You can be content in you, content in now. Just be chill... damn it!

I 100% agree with this and have found it to entirely be my own drive for learning and creating.

For me it is beyond trying to make money or become famous, it is simply to enjoy the journey and the creativity that comes with creating music.

Also, find other people to produce/create music with. Then at least a few others are going to listen. It is way more fun that way.

Some people just never found what that thing is for them. And usually you find those things doing them the hard way while you suck. And then the reward is people will see what you do and recognize the work you put in. But if suddenly every person with a prompt does the exact same thing with zero effort, it does take away from the joy of doing it. At least if the joy of doing it is related to the feeling of liking to do "hard things" or liking to think of oneself as one that "does hard things". And I'd say that includes a lot of people and a lot of activities.

I bet a lot of accountants in the old days were really good at basic math, and proud of being fast and accurate and now there's calculators and the amount of people that work on mental math just for the love of the game is probably super small in comparison to when it was a core skill of many more people's jobs.

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