Thanks for writing and sharing. This articulates a lot of the feelings I have about work as well, and it's put more eloquently than I am able to. It's only now

Thanks for writing and sharing. This articulates a lot of the feelings I have about work as well, and it's put more eloquently than I am able to. It's only now that I appreciate my time at university, where I would actually learn things that interest me, and have a lot of free time as well. If I wanted to try something new, e.g. reverse engineering, I could pick up a solid basis in some weeks (or months). I now have an ever-growing list of projects that I just don't have the time for. The scary thing is that the longer I wait, the more I lose motivation to work on these things. It also seems related to mathematics and computer science as a hobby. If I want to go running, I can do so in an hour and be done with it. With mathematics or programming, I need a couple of hours before I start being productive. Most people who don't do math or programming don't understand this. They frown when I don't make any noteworthy progress in one or two hours, and when I try to work on something I keep getting interrupted which is detrimental to my productivity. I talked to my girlfriend about the long list of projects I still wanted to do (work on programming languages, operating systems, compilers, assemblers, FPGA's, memory controllers, reading/learning math stuff, and writing). A weekend later she asked me something along the lines of "Well, you've had the whole sunday morning to work on these things; Did you manage to cross some things of your list?". I mentioned that these are not one-day projects, but I won't be surprised if she'll ask again after christmas.