Very strange, indeed. So you actually spent lots of your precious time in creative endeavours, music, photography, but in the end you decided that you're worthless? That doesn't compute. Did you really were under such a social pressure that you felt obliged to comply?
Your example of music : though I've been a professional pop musician 20 years ago, I'm currently learning Beethoven's 8th sonata. I don't plan to ever play it in a manner "competitive" with any classically trained pianist; I do it just because of the pleasure I get from playing it. I don't give a smoking fuck of what any potential listener would think of my (pretty poor) interpretation.
I've never stopped making music. I understand that people who've been constrained to learn some piano when young abandon it later, because they never really wanted it anyway; but apparently you decided to learn it yourself, then simply throw it away later judging you're not worth it? Doesn't make sense to me.
It's not that strange. He's just pointing out that there's a difference between wanting to be good at doing something and liking doing something; and that the former is nigh-impossible to reach without the latter.
Really? The music example seems clear enough to me--everybody wants to be able to play well, fewer people want to spend an hour a day playing boring stuff that doesn't sound good. But let's go for a few more examples:
Imagine yourself in the operating theatre, surrounded by nurses and technicians as you prepare to remove a brain tumor. You're about to save someone's life, and earn $5,000 doing it. Wouldn't you want to do that?
Now, would you really want to spend 12 years memorizing facts about obscure diseases first?
How about being able to do informal gymnastics, like you'll see on a youtube search for "tricking"? Wouldn't it be pretty cool to, while walking across a lawn with some friends, decide to do backflip with a 270 degree twist? And actually have it work?
All you'd have to do is around 10,000 hours of grueling exercise and step-by-step drills.
I know that, and that's why I'm better at the piano than gymnastics, because I simply didn't put any effort on stuff I didn't like. What surprises me is that you did an important effort, though you say you didn't grab any reward out of it. That seems unusual to say the less - Everything I've spent a significant time practising, I did because either I liked it, or I rapidly got some reward (like in sports), or eventually because I was under external constraint (like going to school).
Your example of music : though I've been a professional pop musician 20 years ago, I'm currently learning Beethoven's 8th sonata. I don't plan to ever play it in a manner "competitive" with any classically trained pianist; I do it just because of the pleasure I get from playing it. I don't give a smoking fuck of what any potential listener would think of my (pretty poor) interpretation.
I've never stopped making music. I understand that people who've been constrained to learn some piano when young abandon it later, because they never really wanted it anyway; but apparently you decided to learn it yourself, then simply throw it away later judging you're not worth it? Doesn't make sense to me.