[josephg]

> Would you care if I told you I held a world record in the 98m sprint? .. unless you are lucky enough to have a weirdness that resonates with people, you are just an outcast.

Maybe living an enjoyable life isn't about making a name for yourself. The point isn't to do something that other people find interesting. Its to do something you find interesting.

One of my old friends from grade school is an international coffee judge. Every year he goes to some big coffee event where he meets a lot of the growers of coffee from all over the world. He drinks a lot of coffee, judges which beans are the best that year and places a bunch of orders on behalf of multinational coffee companies for coffee beans from farmers. Do I care about coffee? No. Is he famous? No. But he seems to be having a great time. He's not an outcast. The opposite - he's found his people.

I'm kind of the same. I've been working on collaborative editing systems for the last decade. Why? I don't really know. They're just full of nice puzzles that are fun to solve. I've written some systems in my niche which have been world firsts. And some hold world records for performance. I don't do it because you - or anyone else cares. I do it because I care. Because I enjoy this kind of work. There's maybe about 50 people in the world who work on this stuff. Thats more than enough community for me.

Maybe we are all oddballs. Ok by me. The alternative sounds boring.