I'm only a little older and I went through similar stages. Obviously you take the bad with the good, but moving out to the Bay Area I got a little jaded by how

I'm only a little older and I went through similar stages. Obviously you take the bad with the good, but moving out to the Bay Area I got a little jaded by how many people I met in the startup world were so motivated by status. (I actually had a pretty eye opening experience at my first startup school, lots of really nice people, but also more than a few bad people (IMO, my judgement), who didn't care about cutting off or snubbing others in conversations when that person's lack of importance in the tech world became clear. Christ, one guy in particular totally cut off my conversation with a YCombinator guy and didn't acknowledge me when I tried to talk to him, just interested in networking with the YCombinator guy about his dumb 3-d printing network or whatever it was). Ranting a little, but that is definitely a feature of the SV startup world which made me question startups for a while. Finally did a back to basics by deciding to totally ignore the SV scene and just work on stuff I like and hang out with people I like or respect. Making my realize being in the Bay Area is a little pointlessly expensive now, so who knows.