shuttle driver (my kids have to go here and there a lot). chef (when i feel like cooking), laundress (seems like the only thing i do with 5 int he family), domestic housecleaning service (never get paid), and occasional piano teacher (had to stop for awhile after broken leg). forgot about park ranger (take four year old to the park so much that we are a fixture).
actually, in real life, i'd love to be a park ranger. i have this innate curiousity about the environment.
perhaps as a scientist you can get into environmental science, too. a friend of my mom's is into it and gets paid well and free trips here and there. my neighbor works at a drug company wyeth and gets paid well too. She owns her own home. plus health, dental, and retirement benefits and probably stock options and stuff that go with the co. that's where the benefit of a day job comes in. you have medical stuff covered. it's a bummer to work for a company or for yourself where the insurance isn't a large enough company to actually free you from most of the costs. for instance, i was just at the doctor's office and one guy had this little known insurance co. and he was told they simply don't accept that insurance company and he had to get refunds from the insurance after he payed out-of-pocket. another lady at the dental office had to pay $300. on her own suddenly because she wasn't insured at all. emergencies like this come up all the time and eat a hole in your pocket. we only pay $10. co-payments through aetna. we've been self-employed at various times and had to pay much more on policy for much less service than when we were employed outside.
i think you set yourself up to have a reliable means of sustaining yourself when you opt for a day job that might not be all music related. especially if you plan to have a family. and, yet, there are jobs that some do with ease (that take a lot of physical energy) as with conductors, choral teachers, symphony and jazz band cond., piano teachers, theory teachers. the more you do in music, the more money you make i think. not sure how many benefits you get in public schools and colleges. it's the first thing i would check out (ask someone who works at the uni you want to teach at) - what the benefits package is?
my hubby has used all five of his various degree areas and recently got a sixth one (through villanova uni - management class). he has a degree in library science which he used at two libraries and for professional writing and scholarly research which he got paid for at one point. then, when budgets were tight, he switched to using his computer skills (which may be somehow related to his good memory from taking physics?), anyway, he has remained in computer field and has been paid there much more than doing research and writing. he also sings (and could professionally if he wanted). and, he taught in a private school a long time a go - so he has an education degree, too. basically, the more you know - you can just switch around to whatever job suits you at the time and what you are asked to do there (including learning new info).
for me, i variously tutored reading, taught piano, sewed (professional - for weddings, home decor), played a few 'gigs,' and at one point worked for a piano store and also as piano teacher at a piano store. passed the C-best test in california so that i could start doing more teaching (substitute), but never really did any. anyhew, have found that none of these jobs that i love could i support myself with - because they are mostly self-employment. on various months i've made income in the past - but my husbands income has been more regular. we were self-employed at the time of my son's birth and whew! that was a lot of money up front. for the second two at least we had insurance (which really helps!).
Topic: day job thread again - need inspiration