And that's understandable. What John was saying and many of us here echo is that, for us, we'd like to want do the other things, but programming (outside of the commercial grind) is sweeter than all those things. To be consumed by (personal) work, working late into the night only to wake up and continue, uninterrupted and enjoying the bliss of focus, well, it can't be beaten. There's nothing like it.

> Programming is beginning again to be to the exclusion of all else in my life. (The table saw sits slowly rusting. The bike hangs on the wall in the garage.)

This in particular hits home. Programming, to the exclusion of all else in life.

> What am I trying to say? I have a programming addiction? (Maybe.)

There are times that I feel pulled in every direction by life, family, work, being alive, and it keeps me from this software ambrosia, even though I know that spending my life in front of a CRT/LCD/TFT/whatever they are these days is in a way wasted. I've spent 23 years doing it and I'm 33 now, and it feels like life has flown by in the glow of a terminal prompt.