Time Management and Priorities while getting the most out of life

One of the things that did come up is that in general the project I am working on is very challenging, and so spending 60-70 hours a week on math is necessary in order to develop the research successfully.

Overall I mostly enjoy, and can, as Brojo suggested, cultivate enjoyment of all of the actual momentary activities of it.

However it doesn't leave much time for other things.

But at the same time other things are not so valuable.

Emotionally I do have a desire to practice music more than the 5-10 hours a week that the work regimen allows me for. But at the same time I suppose it is purposeless recreation.

That is, I did fail as a musician and am generally poorly regarded as a musician and performer in general. So I don't add much value to the world by playing and so engaging with music is self indulgent.

Now, with pickup and sex I've made peace with it, but that was easier because I at least had the experience of being sexually attractive and having a highly pleasurable exciting sex life in my 20s, at the sacrifice of having to spend a full time job worth of time on pickup study and practice as well as drug use to make myself more charismatic. And with hedonism rather empty at the end of the day, I can look back at an active sex life as simply a nice memory from my youth. And since I don't want kids there's no external reason to pursue women in that respect.

However, with music, I never had the exciting experiences of performing for large audiences. So it's a bit more difficult emotionally to say that I will treat it as a hobby to enjoy myself and refrain from pursuit of performance beyond occasional open mics or busking and refrain from recording and releasing my compositions.

I suppose one possibility is having some point in the future to aim for, say in 5 years, when I am successful enough to obtain a semblance of professional security and be able to reduce my work hours closer to 50 and then spending more time on music then. But that's a big if. So is this a matter of simply emotional processing, that is "grieving" that dream of the "compelling musician" experience?

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