As to Genteel's question, I think that you raise a great point. However, I think like rob mentioned, if music is a lifelong passion we should expect as we in Rastafari say, "Trod over hills and valleys."
There are ups and downs, ebbs and flows, but what is the long arc trajectory?
I think to put this in Campbellian terms, when musicians and music lovers get past the infatuation stage and evolve into a serious marriage, they have found apotheosis and are bringing home the Ultimate Boon. So what they, either fans or musicians are chasing is no longer the new, but perfection. A kind of balanced bliss. There is a sense of vision.
It is the only way to survive years, possibly decades of devoting so much of your life to spending odd and long hours in dive bars, shitty clubs, and smoke filled jam spaces
Me? I admit to having lost sight of the Vision, I gave up on that goal, I decided that devoting all that time to that setting wasn't part of my Vision any more, instead I focus on my school teaching as my stage and audience.
I will say this, admitting to becoming a "failed musician" has made my music so much more satisfying for myself. I always wrote and performed music for what it did and does inside for me, but I also was intrigued, indeed DRIVEN to share it with other people at all costs. Since that extrovert part of my soul is now overly occupied with a different audience on a daily basis, I don't have the spiritual capacity to expend myself any further. So the music is JUST for me now. It has become purified like a potent extract of my own personal use. Writing and playing my own original music has become like my private stash..