Your description of being an employee resonates with me, and thank you for giving some insight into how you&#x27;ve approached your career and what you see in the future. Though I came from a financially supportive environment, I was (wisely) cautioned against being a risk-taker with my career due to medical issues that I can&#x27;t afford to manage without good company sponsored health insurance. My parents urged me to get good skills so that I could be a valuable employee, obtain a nice standard of living, and have some security in the sense that if I had to change jobs, then I would have skills and a good background in order to get hired and retained.<p>Here&#x27;s where the correlative kicks in: I always wanted to be a full-time musician, and I still do...but I view success in music a lot like being involved with a start-up. There&#x27;s the product&#x2F;service angle (quality and innovation matter, unless they don&#x27;t), the investor relationship (labels), the marketing budget, and absolutely no guarantees of success. Actually, it&#x27;s an offhand joke, but being a full-time musician writing originals (e.g. not in a wedding&#x2F;corporate party cover band) is a lot like choosing poverty up front for a potential windfall later.<p>Being an employee has been a choice, and one that I&#x27;m glad to have made because with patience and investing in myself, I&#x27;ve been able to acquire lots of equipment and spent hundreds - if not thousands - of hours playing, writing and recording music. Because I didn&#x27;t seek out the &#x27;traditional&#x27; channel of label investment and signing away certain rights, I&#x27;ve been able to build a library of my own content which I consider like a savings of sorts. Maybe it&#x27;s a worthless legacy in dollar terms, or maybe when an opportunity finally arises to do some business with my material, I won&#x27;t be caught empty handed. The trade-off in security and health isn&#x27;t glamorous, but it&#x27;s certainly something I&#x27;m proud of choosing and accomplishing thus far.<p>TL,DR; If your goal is to get a Nolan Ryan rookie card and the guy won&#x27;t trade it unless you offer the entire roster of the 1989 Oakland As Championship team in trade, then get to work building up what you need to get what you want.