I picked up a Masters on the way to getting a PhD but ultimately dropped out because I felt like I had quit learning and was just slogging and I found I wasn't

I picked up a Masters on the way to getting a PhD but ultimately dropped out because I felt like I had quit learning and was just slogging and I found I wasn't all that passionate about the particular domain. Furthermore one day sitting in a seminar listing to a couple professors and grad students arguing about some theory I realized I just didn't care about the things they were arguing about. So I left went into industry applying research skills to practical problems. Later I started branching out and getting into corpus analysis and latent semantic analysis - nothing to do with my Masters or PhD studies from domain perspective but those research skills transferred over. At one point I was visiting with an older friend with a PhD, a successful serial entrepreneur and very smart guy and I commented with some regret about not finishing my PhD and maybe someday I would go back and study computational linguistics. His response gave me new perspective. "Mike, why would you do that? You are already doing the work that those guys hope to do when they get done!" His comment made me feel better but .... still there is something about learning in an intense graduate studies setting that I miss. And, there is the social esteem that we give scholars who have pushed through and earned a PhD. I guess I don't have practical advice but if you really feel the draw to do a Masters see what you can do to make it happen.