By the way, I'm no pro, so I'm just giving you my opinion. I wanted to go pro before, but didn't want it bad enough. I would take several of the right steps in that direction and would get some promising results from this advice that I'm giving you, but I didn't follow through to the end result of playing full time. You can't give up though! If you want it bad enough, you won't give up I don't think. And as an example of what ozboy warned you about, I had been asked in the past to attend a pre-recording rehearsal once with a group that I knew nothing about and they needed someone to come in and play trumpet for the recordings. I got to the rehearsal on a recommendation from a friend. Dude, these guys were playing some mean charts... all original. Most of the guys were Berklee grads, and they gave me a chart to transpose and play! There were a lot of 32nd note unison runs written that were to be played by sax and trumpet. I couldn't hang, I was way over my head. I didn't get that gig, and it kind of put me in a downer that lasted a long time. Anyway, just a little nightmare story to get you going!!!
Just kidding, but that really did happen.