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.