lottery – How much would I prefer – #1 some thoughts

Don‘t get me wrong. Actually, even though I‘m not pursuing my passion the way I imagined I would be doing it with 31, I‘m pretty happy with my life at the moment. I have a well paying Job, which leaves me with enough money to pay-off my debts, invest in some instruments and music lessons and to have a social life. And my skills have also improved, quite impressively if I consider where I started and the people in my surroundings do agree with that conclusion, too. I‘m healthy and even though I’m far from really fit I never have been fitter before.
Yet, sometimes, as almost everybody does I assume, I ask myself how it would be to win the lottery, to be instantly rich you know. Simply being vastly rich, so to speak. And as I was used to dream about this luxury life, with yachts, Lamborghini‘s and Castle‘s to own I found out today, that seemingly my attitude has changed quite a bit.
So I asked myself tpday, If it would really be the right thing for me, to win let‘s say 8 Mio. €, which is is the current lottery-jackpot in Germany. If it would be the best thing for me to happen (and that I‘m pretty thankful that it didn‘t happen in the past, even though no one‘s gonna believe that but more on that later).
What would be the consequences? At first, it would really make everything absolutely easy. I could pay my debts instanstly, buy shit I always wanted and thought I needed, basically whatever I want, put a large amount of it in stocks or whatever and live the rest of my life of the interests, for which 5 mio € would be more than enough, which would still leave me with 3 Mio bucks. You know what I‘m talking about.
But this is exactly where the problem lies in. Wouldn‘t that be to easy? We are not talking about if it‘s possible here, because I have no problem believing that I can win (the pro‘s of being naivly optimistic, because it’s a 50-50 chance: either you win or you don’t) and with that I don‘t care if you know the odds or not.
So the „easy“ is the question!
And yes, it actually would be and I came to realize today, the costs for that seem to high. I mean, I still would instantly focus everything on my music, I‘d go to study the arts, get my skills on a way higher level to get into professional realms, I‘d still busk, invest some money in marketing, produce a high-quality-studio-album and so on. I even could buy enough of my own songs to get me into the charts instantly – instant-winning-card…
But where would be the satisfaciton in that I am asking myself? Yeah, I could buy myself into stardom, or at least into some sort of celebrity. But that wouldn‘t be really fulfilling, wouldn‘t it? That kinda would take away from my music and would reduce it into a vehicle to popularity, as if fame would be the goal.
As I have come a long way from when I wanted to stand in front of tens of thousands of people, sell millions of LP‘s and… I simply wanted to be a star! With all it‘s benefits. Yeah, of course, I wanted to make music, yet it seems like my fixation on music would have been just a vehicle towards appreciation from other people to feed my self-consciousness. It was all about the money back in the day.
And even though I still want to make money with my music (also because I have to if I want to live off it), my focus has changed more and more towards making my music. And so have my goals towards it changed, from becoming rich and famous to simply making enough money to live a good life, perhaps one day being able to provide a family with all it needs and put something aside for the old age. Even though I wouldn‘t say no to my music takin‘ off, but I hope you see the difference about making music for the money and getting money for making my music.
And as this has changed over the years, so has my lottery-winning-fantasy changed. I think of today as the day, when I decided, that I really don‘t want to WIN millions in the lottery anymore. I can almost feel your kinda condescent, unbelieving smile right now like „yeah, of course, YOU don‘t want to win in the lottery… keep telling yourself that, bro!“ And yet, I‘m sitting here, in my living room (which I definitely do have to clean up tommorrow), with a little over 20k debts, a job with which I can pay it off in 2-3 years and my music as a side-job/hobby, being convinced, that If I could choose this very moment between

1. winning the jackpot,
2. winning a lesser amount with which I could pay off my debt and which would provide me with funds for let‘s say the next two years that I can focus on my theoretical music-education and my music itself.
3. and my present situation

I would honestly choose option 2. But why would I do that.
Look, if I would have 8 Mio. bucks, honestly, I would still make music. I even could go along as I want to. Study music to some degree, writing songs, producing albums and so on. I even could become succesful enough to enlargen my fortune, but I doubt it would be or even could be as satisfying as to work towards it. I wouldn‘t have to fear or be concerned about failure the way I would have to be with option 2. or 3. To be honest, I wouldn‘t have the thrill and a single risk to take or to think through any risk I’m taking. I assume this would cost me a lot of experience along the way, because at some point I might be forced to choose between different options of which one leads towards succeeding and the other to failure.
And I think that my present situation takes it‘s toll in that change of mind. I mean, it really feels great to pay off the debts I built up in the past while pursuing my music with no success at all, to see things change and sorrows passing away. There‘s a satisfaction in that and a lot of growth I had to go through, to reach that point. I see how the relieve of financial pressure has changed me, yeah it freed my creativity and persistence in my goal, how it helped me overcome that viscous circle of sorrows and provided me the first time in my life with a feeling of success or achieving something which pays off (and again that money-argument, I‘m sorry, but it is like that, money might not be anything, but without it anything is nothing).

One could argue now: „If there‘s so much growth in that why not take option 1 and completly work for it?“
Good question and the answer is simple: impatience! I‘ve come so far by now and I really do like my job. It even provides me with the ability to maybe put enough money aside that I could quite safely drop out of it in five years and go and study or provide me with enough lessons over the upcoming couple of years that this even might be enough to transition to full-time-musician again, or at least part-time-musician. If my debts are paid off I basically can earn my fix-costs with a part-time-job (with 10-12 days of work a month) and can put more time into my music to build it up more effectively. BUT, we are talking about 3-5 years from now on, which is quite some time left to overcome to be honest. Time which, no matter how much I like my present job, I would prefer to spend in a class or in lessons to work on my guitar-skills for example and go out busking, aquiring stages to play on and create a base of customers for my art wether it be playing on festivities like weddings and birthday‘s or focussing on promoting myself as an entertaining stage-artist. What more could I learn in one year with 3 or 4 lessons a week, what could I accomplish in songwriting if I could focus on it everyday instead of spending 9 hours blocked everyday, six days a week for three weeks in a row at work. Because even though I like my working-environment I guess it‘s obvious what I would choose if I could this moment… what perhaps anyone would choose I think.

Through that thought the only thing leftis to figure out how much it would need to instantly switch between these two states. I would need 20k to pay off my debts, let‘s say 20k to invest in instruments and studio-equipment, and maybe 33k a year for rent and to simply live life without having to worry about money whilst investing in those classes I talked about for 2-3 years.
That would sum up to round-about 150k, perhaps 100k would be enough, too if I‘d made a few cuts in expenses. That would still provide me with the neccessity to create a source of income out of my music, it would leave me with many milestones to accomplish and with the satisfaciton they leave after reaching them and would bring me towards situations where I would have to make decisions which would decide about my faith… and yeah, it would still give me the thrills of trying to build something up with the possibilities of failure. And both, success or failure would come out of my own decisions. If I would win 8 Mio. I wouldn‘t need to care about the above anymore, I wouldn‘t need to fear failure, you know? I probably still would, but not on the same level as if my well-being is depending on me figuring this whole thing out.

I think what takes part in this change of mind is, that I‘m convinced for the first time (I always wanted to believe it, and thought about it the same way, but being convinced is a step up), that I can accomplish whatever I want and that there is no work of miracles needed to make a living out of music as the majority puts it. It requires work, yes, but when there‘s a will, there‘s a way and I do believe in myself as I have never done before. I‘ve become quite a good singer, not a perfect one, but a very good one… this is the instrument I mastered the most and worked on the most. I literally don‘t need those millions anymore, to define my self-consciousness and self-worth through it. I wouldn‘t even need those 150k anymore, because I‘m on the path to go where I want to go already, it just takes more time to do what I‘m doing right now, which would be the only real challenge left in that department. The 150k would simply be the vehicle to skip the path I‘m on right now, out of which I don‘t think there is much growth left to do to reach my goals in music. You know what I mean?
Back in the days, if I would have won a jackpot, I‘d probably be dead by now! Or something worse. And not that I‘m claiming, that there‘s no room for me to grow anymore, it‘s the opposite actually, just where I am at the moment will not provide me with many more opportunities anymore to progress in those distinctive areas of growth as I went through the last years, except it would require even more patience from me. And even though I seem impatient and impatience is the motor which makes me think about this hypothetical scenario, I have proven myself to be patient. I am waiting and working on my music for eight years now. I have dealt with impossibilities and was blessed with an enormous amount of luck which prevented me from the worst. But I feel that NOW should be the time for me to do as I explained above. That this scenario of me winning or generating the 150 k NOW or within the next months or whatever is what I have earned myself for still keeping my dreams alive, for not giving up, for even putting my main-motivation to live aside for a while to grow responsibilities and abilities, to become the person I need to be to achieve want I so desperately feel I was born to do.
And that is, why I can honestly say, that I don‘t need and don‘t want to win 8 Mio € anymore! 150K would be more than enough!
And to conclude it with a little realism: I will still go through with it, because I know how the odds are, even though I tend to ignore them. I just leave room for the possibility, that it could happen but I don’t make my well-being and my goals depend on it ;-).