I teach High School full time. The time I get in the summer seems like plenty, but I've discovered it's not enough to give me a chance at more gigging.

I had a go at it a few years ago. Got a grant and cut a demo, thought about cd funding, etc. I would like to do much of this still, but time, cash, and most of all energy are real limitations, and with a family and a mortgage and so on, I've had to reexamine how I look at things.

I really admire folks who have/are making a living out of music, but I've realised that my goals need to be more realistic given my constraints. If you ignore those constraints, I've found you can get yourself in considerable trouble, ie burnout.

So what I do is: gig with a few friends when the opportunity arises. Icontinue to write my songs and have developed my solo act a bit more in the last year. What I'm thinking about as well is to produce a real home made recording to sell at gigs. And finally to try to promote some of my tunes to publishers (That's the big one). But I remind myself to keep this really open ended and flexible. It means I do have to push myself to gig more, but to pick and choose, and not feel bound to do so. And, if at the end all I've got is a homemade cd and a few decent gigs to remember, hell, that's alright. Not terribly business like I know, but it turns out I'm not much of a business man. Tough. sb