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Comment on Ask HN: Are you as passionate as you used to be?

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Yeah sure. I think in part it's about doing interesting stuff.

To be real, I'm not at all passionate about my dayjob. I do what I do because I get paid. I would not do any of it if I didn't get paid or didn't need to get paid. I do a good enough job not to get complaints about the workmanship, but not much more. The truth is I get paid the same regardless.

Recognizing this, I work less. Part time. 30 hour weeks. Saves some sanity toward things I do care about. A lot of people seem to be working themselves to the bones trying to save up some nest egg to retire early. I just don't have that faith in the future I guess. Seems like an awful lot of eggs in one basket. All I know I might be run over by a bus next week, or die of a heart attack at 42. At least then I'll die having lived a little, rather than having postponed life entirely.

All the while I'm every bit as passionate as I've ever been about building Marginalia Search. That's like a fractal of interesting problems, by design. The more I work on it the more ideas I have. At this point I have probably years' worth of plans and ideas, and how well I realize them has a real impact on the project. It's completely different. Very foreign from how my dayjob works.

In the end, it's sort of paid off. Having a project like this has created a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have if I was working 60 hour weeks hoarding money until some time later.

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