Paul Graham's essay really resonated with me - I was saying 'yes, yes!' as I read every sentence. But I think the most important bit for me is in your comment:

Paul Graham's essay really resonated with me - I was saying 'yes, yes!' as I read every sentence. But I think the most important bit for me is in your comment: "This freedom is conducive to learning new things." I have many projects; I've always been this way. School work was interesting (sometimes) but things only got really interesting when I took something from school and turned it into something of my own. Like the time I decided that while atlases were really interesting, building my own atlas with different continents and countries would be much more fun[1]. Or the thing that happened when, after a couple of weeks of starting to learn French I decided: I can do better than that![2]. I taught myself how to build websites not because I wanted a job building websites - it turns out that building other people's websites is quite boring, though the money comes in useful. I learned to code because I wanted to show off my work on my projects to other people - even if the displays looked nonsensical (or, as family members have suggested: a waste of time). For instance I've learned a lot about designing and building fonts, and had much enjoyment doing the work, even though the end products will never be used by anyone else[3][4]. The face that, as a consequence, I can now have heated arguments with designers about font kerning issues is a useful byproduct of my hobby, nothing more. [1] - Example map: http://rikweb.org.uk/map/images/bigmap.jpg http://rikweb.org.uk/map/images/bigmap.jpg [2] - I called the result Gevey: http://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ http://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ [3] - Example font: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/oyis/index.php?page=script http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/oyis/index.php?page=script [4] - Another example font because this one is a bit mad: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=script-logo http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=script-...