Well, as the essay suggests, "working and getting paid" will become your top-thought and "working on your own projects" will start to slip away. If I focused o

Well, as the essay suggests, "working and getting paid" will become your top-thought and "working on your own projects" will start to slip away. If I focused on getting paid, I think I would start to rationalize putting short-term gains ahead of long-term gains. I would tell myself that by working I'm learning X, Y or Z while avoiding thoughts like, "...but those things are easy." I am recently out of college, yes. Or rather I dropped out (about five years ago). I'm living off of savings -- about $5000 a year. You can stretch a little bit of money a long way like that. And yeah, completely isolating oneself is probably a bad idea.