>I didn’t go to Unix school or do practice reps of building networks. I stayed up late nights building weird and sometimes nefarious projects. This is how i le

>I didn’t go to Unix school or do practice reps of building networks. I stayed up late nights building weird and sometimes nefarious projects. This is how i learned Linux/Unix, AWS, bash scripting and all sorts of things. And then .. one day I found myself ... older. Work would kick my ass and I had spent my 20s eating like shit because i spent too much time sitting at a computer. So time once used for computer play became gym time, jogging time, swimming, hiking, yoga, lifting time. Then a little older, and starting to buckle down the finances because we got married and now wanted a house so we stopped going out so much and started staying in more and watching movies, playing board games. The money i once used to build new computer or have spare machines or pay for EC2 instances and ELBs and S3 buckets, that all dried up. Then i have a house to take care of - which takes time. Then i have a kid to take care of. All of a sudden I'm 40, with a house, a kid, a 8-10 hour a day job, i get up at 6am and go jogging. The stress of life has boiled into an anxiety problem - so i can't over caffeinate anymore (which used to keep my ADHD at bay, to an extent). I have to exercise daily to keep in shape and htat anxiety at bay. I'm getting older and stressed out and maybe i need to eat healthier and spend more time in the kitchen making sure I'm getting whole, nutritional, well balanced meals and not a lot of quick, processed shit. This makes my child's health better too. And now i have no time for "play". And when i have time for play - one more computer screen is the last thing in the world i want to look at. and now i understand how STEM basically exploits young men who are willing to spend 8 hours a day working, plus a couple hours of overtime daily or weekly, ontop of all the free training they're constantly giving themselves via "play"..then looking at people 20-30 years their senior and expecting them to keep up. What you love - also just changes. Work is the best way to ruin any passion. The toxic co-workers, the preachy HR departments, the exciting projects ruined by bureaucracy, the small companies that expect too much of you, the large companies that lock you into narrowly defined roles and treat you like a number, the endless meetings (zoom or IRL), the jam packed calendars to the point you don't know how you're going to have the time to ramp your brain up to take on something complex. You start to realize.. hey, i like gardening. I like making furniture. I l ike writing poetry. I like playing video games with my kid or teaching him to swim or ride a bike. I like taking care of my yard. I like just... putting a pair of headphones on and listening to a record, carving time out to read on a regular basis, maybe catch and old movie with the wife after t he kid's asleep. I like some fine dining, or a couple glasses of red wine 1-2x a month. All the things that bring you the joy that computer-play once did, do absolute fuck all to further your career. Then what? what do you do then?