Yes, but no. I am no longer able or (more importantly) interested in working 18 hour days. Like you, I now have a family, a house, pets, etc. All of them get

Yes, but no. I am no longer able or (more importantly) interested in working 18 hour days. Like you, I now have a family, a house, pets, etc. All of them get time that was previously available for coding (and partying). I can no longer focus as well as I could, my memory is less good, and my ability to hold concepts in my head is more constrained than it was when I was younger. OTOH, I know a heap more. In purely technical areas, in the business domain I've ended up in, in working with people, in .. so many areas. I am absolutely a different value-proposition to an employer than I was 20 years ago. I'm a very different employee -- not better, not worse, but suited to different aspects of the work at hand. Motivation comes and goes. I don't find it hard to get passionate about things, but I realize now that most things are a marathon, not a sprint. A deep commitment ends up beating a flare of passion that moves on quickly to something else. Also, burn-out is a thing for me. Not the debilitating kind (although that's totally a thing too) but the more insidious kind where you skim along, dipping in and out of the danger zone, propped up by good challenging projects, awesome co-workers, and vacations; but weighed down by stress, and bad projects, and working with jerks. Figuring out when that's happening, and how to turn things around, took me a while. All just my views, YMMV, etc.