That's different, though, from saying people should give up on exploring the options, just because they probably won't make any progress that hasn't already been made by someone else before; or worse still, that there's something wrong with a person who would dare even try that. — Pfhorrest

If this is all you're frustrated with, then, of course, stuff the naysayers. Feel it roll off your back as you continue forward.

It's actually less common to find in the music/art world; innovation and newness are names of the game in my world, so I find it odd to encounter something like what @TheQuestioner is saying. He just sounds disillusioned, which I don't think is the same motivation behind your philosophical naysayers.

As to fossilization of understanding being good...yes and no. Falling into a mystical pit of everything and nothing isn't healthy, but neither is the fossilization of your understanding to the point that you cordon off legitimate paths, causing blind spots that you'll have a hard time undoing. This is what I see the most of in philosophy. To use extremes, it's the analytic who can't even entertain the theoretical possibility of something mystical (either out of fear or hubris), and likewise it's the religious figure who can't engage scientific enquiry because he's afraid it will destroy his worldview.

This. Plus everything I write is better than the best music out there as it answers to my particular taste and mood at the time. You may hate it but it's pretty close to perfect to me.

Novels, painting, sculpture, opera, poetry, dance, music--all the arts--have become vastly more available to billions of people than they were before high speed printing, photography, motion film, radio, and television came along. What art hasn't been affected by this? — Bitter Crank

I agree, this is a situation which has greatly devalued art. But there is a further problem associated with this flooding of the art market through the modern media facilitation. We no longer have a good source for principles to distinguish quality artwork, to train us in the difference between good and bad in art. So not only are our senses overwhelmed with art everywhere, so much so that the presence of advertising overwhelms some people, but we are also greatly deficient in the capacity to distinguish which is good art and which is bad. Plato is often criticized for his assertions of a need to censor artists, but it appear to be getting to the point in the modern world, where censorship will become a necessity, as art escapes from the art community (where it is produced by trained artists), into the global community (where it is produced by everyone).

If I spend weeks creating music that will not receive any recognition, then I feel like I am wasting my time — TheQuestioner

What if we are to understand the process of creation (music in your case) not only in terms of ‘art for art’s sake’, but also in terms of simply giving some kind of compensation? I mean a compensatory function that could be found in the consumption of artwork as well as in one’s own creating? A thing possesses aesthetical value when you perceive it independently from means-end considerations, utilitarian meaning or physical characteristics, which serve to make formal significances, as an aggregation of components irrelevant for questioning the ‘essence’, predominant in a way (when you question the visual or audial material it consists of). I want to focus on the compensatory function of ‘communicating’ with art forms. I think you’ve heard of the notion of catharsis which is associated with Greek dramaturgy and Aristotle. In my opinion, in the context of art, it would be an interesting step to use the word ‘catharsis’ implying compensation as such. What is going to be compensated by the work of art? A lot of thoughts, feelings, and impressions, to be honest. It’s not necessarily always about the negative aspects of our everyday lives.

Once it may happen to be an intensive feeling, an impulse, a strong need to do something different, something out of this world. Art makes it possible and, as a result, time-wasting becomes ‘valid’ in the illogical far away dimension untamed by rationality. I must say that communicating with artwork, in sense of perceiving and consuming, brings catharsis not to the same extent as creating the artwork do. In the case of creating, you appear to be much closer to the experience of some mystical unquestionable pureness like flow in which you’re blindly involved. Don’t want to say that creating is fun. No. It is a painful process. I’m not a musician, but from time to time I write (no in English) literature texts – which I consider to be of extremely low quality, so I never reread them, leaving my abilities just the way they are – because I feel a spontaneous impulses to become a part of non-everyday compensatory existence. The overall process of writing is full of pain and constant dissatisfaction, but I enjoy the rebirth afterward, like Greek personages haha. Perhaps it is a bit romanticized. At any rate, I encourage you to create (to waste time) in order to receive that hugely rare kind of non-everyday experience.