Do I choose music or do I choose an academic career?
Why does it have to be one or the other?
Academics is intellectually stimulating, but music is my lover.
Why is there no time for both?
Isn't time a social construction?
By this logic we should have created paradise
instead of destruction.

Live what you want to live. I can tell you, now that I'm living in the 54th year of my life, I would always choose the funny side which I didn't years ago.
BTW Steve Jobs did the same when he was told that his life is shorter than he thought.