So, this is going to sound negative on the surface, but you kinda had to know my first "real" bass instructor to understand. He was an old school jazz cat and the "go to" guy in the area back in the day. The guy had a habit of just dropping little pearls of wisdom on you that were open ended, but always left you thinking. So after about 3 years or so of working with him, he stops what we're playing and just says, "ya know, the better you get the less money you're going to make doing it." Then just picked right back up where he left off at. I didn't get it at the time, but I realized later he was probing to see how serious I was about being as good of a musician as I could push myself to be, knowing that chances are I wasn't ever going to make a living at it or be famous or rich. It was sort of his was of saying, am I wasting time here, or are you really serious about learning and pushing yourself hard to get better. It has been motivational for me when I hit low spots. Its a call to regroup when you think about giving up on something you really love to do just because the end results aren't exactly what you dreamed they would be.
A few weeks later (I think I was about 14 or 15 then), he stops in the middle of a lesson and just said (it wasn't a question) "You gotta girl now". I said yeah, how'd you know? He responded that it showed in my playing this week. Either play the bass or play with the girl. "You can't give both enough attention at the same time, but either way you go is fine. Just know the bass will be there for you until you die and will treat you like you treat it. The girl will move on soon enough either way." I chose the girl. He was right. I went back to the bass right after that and made amends.
