HATE: Possibility of not living up to my potential

#12:
Life's tough. I mean, I have a pretty great life, don't get me wrong. I think on a daily basis I'm quite a happy person. But in the back of my mind, I wonder every now and then, if I'm living up to my potential. Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing in this world? Am I contributing to society to the fullest degree? The talents I think I possess or I've been told I possess, am I utilizing them to better myself and the people around me?
Most of the time I think the answers to these questions are: I'm not so sure.

I grew up with music as my #1 priority. I wasn't really great at sports. I tried my hand at tennis mostly, and eventually gave it up. I was pretty good in school, but mostly because I was bullied into being good in school. I'm first generation Chinese. Anything less than above average is considered failing. But music is what I always fell back on, it's what I always did good in, it's what I had a knack for. I even went to college for music, I thought it was going to be my life's work. Then Napster hit, the Internet blew up, and technology killed the record company star and the music business as I knew it. Plus love happened to me. And you do things you'd never think you'd do when you're in love. Like leave NYC for good and stay in Boston where the music business industry is almost non-existant.

So then what? I thought I had the second best answer: radio. Still a part of the music industry, and making a living at it. But in radio, if you aren't willing to move around and be flexible with the markets, that too will go bust. And now here I am, coordinating educational programs for executives at MIT. I know. Sometimes I even ask myself, "WHAT??" It's crazy, it doesn't really make any sense, and sometimes it kind of makes me feel like everything I did up until this point was a complete waste of my life.

Most people take piano lessons, and stop after a year or two, or sometimes even a few years. I took them for 12 years. I took classical vocal lessons for 5 years, and that doesn't include the voice lessons and classes that were required in college as part of my major. I played the trumpet and was good at it. I still have my trumpet from junior high. It's a thing of beauty. I was in a band in college. We played some cool places. It wasn't music I was writing, but I was still creating something. I even recorded a few things with my then boyfriend/now husband. It was fun, I still felt like I had my hand in something, like not everything that I made my mom pay for was a waste. But now I work crazy hours every couple of months and I work hard in between those crazy times on making executives and clients happy when they come to MIT. I have a mortgage, I have a dog, life happened and songwriting and recording just seems like a far away past. What's the point if no one hears it? Or what if they hear it and I'm totally living in my own head, and actually all those years of piano and voice did absolutely nothing because I'm actually really bad at it all, and no one ever told me.

Sometimes I have these crazy or very common sense thoughts and ideas, and someone says to me, "brilliant! I didn't think of that!" But I did, yet no one is around to really appreciate it. That's when I question what my life is about, am I important, and what does it all mean.

So, what if all those years I spent on music, I had spent on something else? What if I was actually supposed to go to a "real" college and major in criminal justice and become some awesome judge or FBI agent? Or what if I really am good at math and I just never gave it a real shot cause I was too busy practicing Chopin and I became some awesome mathematician/professor at an ivy league school?

And then I hear a really amazing song from "Camera Obscura", or "Hey Rosetta", or "Denali" and I think to myself, "why didn't I think of that?"

All the 'what ifs' make life hard sometimes. And Mondays don't help.