First off thanks so much for your transparency. Great article and humility that will certainly help the many others in your same situation (like me). I share

First off thanks so much for your transparency. Great article and humility that will certainly help the many others in your same situation (like me). I share your frustrations, but I see things from a different perspective when doing side projects for a few reasons: 1. I treat innovative ideas as potentially growing to something amazing and see them more as passion projects that help me to grow in many ways, including learning new technologies, learning other trades (e.g. marketing, sales). 2. I use my skills learned in side projects as bolsters to my resume. I can testify that I've been approached by employers and been seen as a better candidate than others based on the side project experience I've done. Further, I've gotten other side-gigs that are paying as a result of the side-gig skills I've acquired. Adding these hard and soft skills to your resume makes you a better candidate overall and opens opportunities otherwise unavailable without. 3. I still work a main gig that I (mostly) enjoy, which enables me financially to be able to spend my off-hours working on and funding my passion projects. This to me feels safer than going all in, although it could be argued things inevitably develop more slowly this way. 4. My reward for hard work is similar to open source development in that I'm creating something for humanity that wasn't available before, which may or may not make money, but benefits me for the reasons stated above. Perspective helps here, and if it grows into something bigger then all the better. If it doesn't, then there are other benefits to doing it that help shape you and your skillset.