I would think that pastors not wanting to pay enough to support a family would give anyone a large amount of stress. And that's excluding a lot of other factors.

The OP is definitely not alone.

PRIMA PARS
We’ve all struggled, I’d wager, with some (or all) of the following:
• frustration at the quality of music—both our own and that of those around us in the program. The best laid plans are so often laid waste by others, and it’s totally beyond our control.
• working ourselves to the bone for barely a passing nod… this is enough to induce a mental breakdown. When everyone else on staff has the days surrounding Christmas off, you’re there at church until midnight or 1am, freezing your butt off in a freezing hole church, and then driving home in ghostly streets, all to work yourself equally bare the next few days… and no one but our Lord and our spouses are any the wiser
• stress from important feast days (special music) and stress from visiting high clerics (the bishop is coming for confirmation). Some people politely say that Mass was pretty, but they haven’t the faintest idea what to did to make it passably so.
• the heartbreak of a perfect warmup only to have the motet crash and burn during Mass… or the wonderful Wednesday rehearsal that should have been recorded(!) only to have four of your twelve singers suddenly call off or just not show at all with no explanation. We’ve had the mornings where we’ve just had to scrap the anthem all together because it’s just not in the cards. What frustration.
• we’ve all sent out practice tracks only to have them ignored, and have the people who need them the most do the poorest singing… all that effort evaporated into thin air… you don’t believe in corporal punishment, per se, but you understand how it used to be a thing, and silently daydream about what it must have been like in the “good old days” with a tiny wry smile
• we’ve all had terribly upset stomachs during mass… or had to come in and play for Christmas with a raging fever and hope to God we don’t pass out. Some of us have had to make it through the gospel acclamation panic-stricken, only to rip off our robes and go tearing down the loft stairs to the nearest bathroom, hoping to God we make it back alive before the offertory starts… and some of us with really sensitive stomachs, have had this happen more than once. Some of us even secretly stashed plastic bags in the loft for emergencies. But we smile, and pretend there’s nothing amiss. There are one or two choir members who know you behind closed doors, and you’re eternally grateful for their sympathetic knowing glances on rough days.
• many of us have composed something beautiful, something that perhaps even had a bit of our soul in it (so t speak) only to have it stomped on by a choir director or a gruff priest. One could crawl into a hole in those days. They spoke their mind freely not knowing it was your music, and you were treated to the harsh reality of “de gustibus”
• we’ve been chewed out by angry priests over the smallest of things… not-infrequently even things that are beyond our control. We’ve been told we play too loudly… but also too softly.., too fast and too slow, sometimes in the same sentence. It is bewildering, especially when it comes from people who aren’t trained musicians, and who haven’t the faintest idea about what it takes to actually lead a congregation from an organ… our music choices are too modern / too Protestant / too old-fashioned… and then we have to politely grin and bear dressings down from disgruntled parishioners too… and we have to be extra polite then because we are “employees” (even when we aren’t paid) and it would cause scandal if we adequately woke up for ourselves. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, as they say…
• we’ve all planned beautiful liturgies and made it a mile down the country road designing the worship aid only to be told there would be a change of plans
• we’ve all prepared specific music related to the readings only to have the pastor change his mind at the last minute and do the optional reading instead, or randomly decide to say an optional memorial… or the lector is just stupid and flat out reads the wrong page… and suddenly the offertory hymn that was chef’s kiss perfect seems very inappropriate, but you just have to role with it…
• some of us have had typos haunt us… and even have worship aids show up in our mailboxes anonymously corrected with purple highlighters…
• some of us have been blamed for sound system malfunctions… in fact, we’ve been blamed even though the settings hasn’t been changed in months, instructed to fix it, and then very rudely dressed down for “changing things we weren’t supposed to” since, apparently, the angry pastor has very short term memory.
• some of us have been told to let ourselves in when it’s time for the weekly meeting, and then two weeks later, yelled at for coming in before we were told to enter.
• many of us have only had one day off a week for more than a decade… because, you know, “you only work half a day on Saturday and Sunday”… and, of course, we are expected to change our day off at the drop of a hat, or forego it all together on particular weeks when the schedule gets busy. It’s ok to consistently schedule funerals on your day off without consulting you, but it’s as rare as chicken teeth to have a funeral on the pastor’s day off.
• we’ve all been stiffed by the bride and groom, or by the family of the deceased, even after coming in on our day off, and sometimes at no insignificant commute
• We’ve been trampled by brides or their mothers… and summarily redressed for refusing requests for very inappropriate music at a funeral (that happened to be “sung at meemaw’s funeral 15 years ago, so what’s the problem now!”)
• not only have people written to the pastor about you (for actually doing what the GIRM instructs,) but some extra passive aggressive parishioners have even written to the bishop… and the bishop has sent the diocesan liturgy director to come talk to you personally with the pastor as witness… (a 90 minute drive) all because your bulletin column touched on the subject of propers and how they are superior to the four hymn sandwich… meanwhile the liturgical abuse at other parishes is renown in the region

SECUNDA PARS

• many of us have had to play up to 6 masses per weekend — well in excess of the canonical limit for priests! — to the extreme detriment to our own faith. Then spiritual aridity sets in… deeply… a chasm and crisis of faith that takes well nigh a year to climb out of. You suffer from an extreme sense of guilt about becoming so detached from mass… you realize that you have become overly familiar with holy things and struggle to treat them with due reverence. But how can you enter deeply into the mysteries when you’re tasked with pumping masses out mill-style like a little music factory? Oh how lovely it would be when you read about other parishes with more than one organist, or associate DM’s who handle some of the program. Ah to dream…
• some of us have even had to recuse ourselves from receiving the Blessed Sacrament due to the absolute outrage we feel at the unbelievable liturgical abuses we’ve witnessed, knowing full-well it would be a mortal sin to receive Him with such (admittedly holy-inspired) rage. Some pastors go on such a wake of destruction that you actively want to flee, but your gas bill depends on the check… but the abuses get so bad… SO BAD, and all the beautiful things you’ve worked for YEARS to foster crumble before your very eyes…
• then you learn that the same “pastor” who is destroying the liturgical life of your parish is seeking to actively hire your job out from under you (against the express unanimous wish of the parish council) and so you attempt to resign, and give two week notice, offering to play through the VERY major feast day that is just around the corner… only to have the “pastor” walk out of your meeting without uttering ONE SINGLE WORD, only to have a stranger come in to tell you minutes later that you are being escorted off the property and are never to come back… (all because you tried to chant the simple English proper communion Antiphon in addition to the communion hymn) and then you get the heart breaking emails from the members of the parish and parish council who lament your leaving and how there was no music … on Christmas… (you find out years later that the pastor is trying to get rid of the organ that was newly installed and fully paid for by a donor, and upon which you played the dedicatory recital)
• so, with your head hanging low, you take refuge as a “layman” and attend masses incognito at a parish where they’ve never heard of you an hour away on the other side of the diocese. It works for a time. You’re relieved to finally not have responsibilities.. you can just attend mass and PRAY. Oh thank God! To just pray! But your heart of hearts is in making the musical offering at Mass… and you struggle too, because you know you could sight-read the music better than the musicians at this church (this is not hubris, it is just, sadly, true), and, ironically, you find the music a distraction, rather than a help, because you cannot tune it out… so finally, after months away, you re-enter ministry. Again, damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
• some of us have even helped to pay for an organ to be installed at our place of employment, only to have a cold-hearted congregation dismiss you after mass one day, and offer to refund your donation to you on your way out the door. You don’t’ take the money because you offered it to God, but a little corner of your sinful heart wishes you’d have taken the money back just to stick it to them and then give it somewhere else that it would be appreciated. It’s behind you now, but it hurts 10 years later.
• There are the sad days where you leave for church on a Saturday afternoon and your small children wonder why you’re leaving… AGAIN… because you’re never there to have fun with on a Saturday afternoon. Damn those Saturday Masses. WHYYYY do we do this to ourselves? Hmm? In fact, any time you walk toward the garage door, your 3 yo daughter innocently asks if you’re going to church, because all she knows is that you go through that door and disappear… all the time… and mommy always tells you it’s church. You miss every Wednesday bed time. For years upon end. You miss every 3 day weekend because you still have work… so your wife takes the kids out of town to visit family… but you can never go. And you sit at home, empty, and alone, heartbroken. It just comes with the job. and on the flip side, even when you do get that one, special, week-day off (when everyone else is at work) you still have to drive your kids to school in the morning, and pick them up later, so you end up being at your job EVERY DAY even if you don’t stay there every day. It does a number on you sometimes.
• you spend your own money acquiring things for your job and for the church in general… if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have it. Want things to be nice? It’s on you. Sometimes it makes your wife mad. Often you just have to hide it, or you convince yourself “it’s a tithe”. If the church even knew… the records of our donations, and our actual donations have but a passing resemblance…
• then there are the times that the other staff don’t do their jobs… so you wait until everyone else leaves… and then you mop the bathroom floor and restock the paper towels. Because if you don’t, it will be a mess all weekend. We have someone full-time to take care of this, but here we are. The usual. And so it goes. But you care. You care about little details. You don’t know WHY you care, but you do.

So how do you cope? WHY do you even cope?

Something to do with Jesus. Something to do with Beauty. Something in your heart of hearts tells you it’s the right thing to do, and that it’s all worth it.

Those late nights all alone in an empty, black church? turns out you can have a nice moment alone with Jesus, with only the faint glow of the sanctuary lamp. You know every inch of this building. You can literally walk it blindfolded. Heck—you do essentially that every choir night in the winter anyway. You turn out the lights after everyone is gone, and you take every step in the pitch black. So you sit alone with Jesus for a minute. Pour out your heart to Him. Then you stand in the center aisle and chant the Salve Regina and hear it echo through the cavernous, empty church. And your soul is stilled. You are grateful that your lot in life is to be in this place… to be on such familiar and intimate terms with Him. Your grateful that your life’s purpose is to LITERALLY RENDER HIM PRAISE… I’m not stuck in a coal mine… or on an oil rig… or a flight attendant who spends half my nights alone in a hotel room half way across the world. No. I get to come be with Him. I get to “say high to all my friends” every day (swing by the reliquary). I get to spend work time making a weekly holy hour. THERE…. THEN… that’s when my battery is recharged. That’s when stillness enters my soul.

Turns out, having a day off during the middle of the week isn’t terrible… it’s easier to take care of important appointments because everything is open. And the fact that my schedule can be flexible, well, that’s good too… sick days for the kids. Whew. I’ll just take my day on Thursday instead of Monday. Thankfully, there are more good priests than bad ones. True, it’s hard to abide when you’re stuck with a bad one for years and years… but the good outweighs the bad. And those letters to the bishop? Well, they pale in comparison to the emails and Christmas cards you’ve received from people who actually do appreciate what you’re doing. Then there’s that one parishioner who casually mentions that they used to make newsletters professionally, and are keenly aware of just how much effort you put into making the worship aids look beautiful. PRAISED BE GOD. SOMEONE GETS IT. Just one!

But one is enough. That simple, off-handed comment put enough wind into your sail to keep you moving for another two months. And so the cycle continues.

*Any implied names, places, or situations are merely coincidental, and are not to be construed with any real persons, living or deceased.*
lol

I kind of went in another direction. As I got older, I became less willing to put up with stressful people and situations. Without descending into general meanness, I decided I had put up with enough and was unwilling to put up with any more. I retired. I reached the point that I realized that if the pastor had a kazoo player at mass, it was better than he deserved. I do still miss some very good people who were at that parish. However, since I retired I have not had to listen to "Eagle's Wings" at any funerals and still don't care about Brad and Buffy's special wedding day and the trash music they wanted. I hope they have children just like themselves.

We had Angles We Have Heard On High every year.

Francis, I enjoy many a good wine (white and red, flat and bubbly) and even a good tawny port.

Serviam

That’s good… most of the time I take on the attributes of a duck… quack back, roll off my back, and waddle into pond for a drink.

Yeah. As I said in my ideal world I’d have an easier Saturday service than Mass. But it’s still difficult if you have kids of any age, above all littles.

probably group therapy sessions should just come with the job.

Either that, or complimentary cases of Jack Daniels.

I can't decide if all of us being able to meet up for a drink once a month would be beautiful or insane.

Together… we each play or sing something for each other, have a meal, shake hands, have a drink. You can come to my house if you want.

(I watched the movie till the end)