[andrewedstrom]

This really resonated with me.

Before getting into programming, I was a somewhat accomplished guitar player. By the time I was 20, I had played in a bunch of bands, recorded several albums, and gone on tour. As a result of these early successes, I developed a big ego about myself as a musician.

I realize now that the main thing driving my musical career was that ego. I enjoyed playing, but getting better at my craft was not my primary driver. Instead, it was that I wanted to be famous and rich and noteworthy and desirable. For me, playing guitar was inexorably linked with becoming a certain kind of person and gaining status.

Now any time I pick the guitar back up for more than a day or two, I quickly get lost in delusions of grandeur. I start thinking about how I'm going to change my whole lifestyle to "be a great guitar player" and playing itself takes the back seat to fantasizing about gaining power and status. Try as I might I can't just casually play guitar for its own sake—kind of like how you have trouble programming without the promise of a conference talk or an influential git repo coming out of it.

For me the solution has been to avoid playing music, and to focus on programming (and my family/friends) instead. I think the groove of ego I carved out as a guitarist is just too deep to allow me a healthier relationship to music. As a programmer, I don't have that same narcissistic false-self to live up to. I just enjoy it and want to get better because it's fun.

Maybe the solution for you could be to take up a creative pursuit other than programming?

[flanker]

I feel that to be something that resonates with me. I started as self thought freelancer loved the symphony of creation and the end product you make. Then I got myself a job I had sucha enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge, I would go above and beyond. Then I burned out, the cycle has repeated couple of times now forcing me to take breaks in 7-8months. One thing I realised I still love creating stuff, but it's all too painful to do it for someone else. The major contributor to it is constantly changing of requirements, sometimes goals altogether scrapping of projects you put lot of brain power in and finally sometimes fighting against the tide. I have experienced people who are just there in the middle management adding unnecessary layer of red tape and doing anything to survive. I feel I'm done with it. I have picked some other stuff, currently searching for something other than a programming job, it's a risk because majority of my work has been programming, other than a failed startup. But I think I will take the risk of exploring.