"You know in my early twenties, let's say, people always thought that I would, you know, be a great mathematician. And be good at various things and so on. And in my late twenties, I hadn't achieved any of the things that people were predicting, and so I call it my black period. I started to wonder you know whether it was all nonsense. Whether I was not a good mathematician after all and so on, and then I made a certain discovery and was shot into international prominence.
As a mathematician when you become a prominent mathematician, in that sense, it doesn't mean that many people know your name. It means that many mathematicians know your name, and there aren't many mathematicians in the world anyway, you know. So it doesn't count very much, but it suddenly released me from feeling that I had to live up to my promise.
You know, I had lived up to my promise. I sort of made a vow to myself. It was so nice not worrying anymore that I thought I'm not going to worry anymore ever again, I was going to study whatever I thought was interesting and not worry whether this was serious enough. And most of the time I've kept to that."
Life, Death and the Monster (John Conway) - Numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCe5HUObD4
I take great solace from these words.