With a show of hands, how many people continue to work on personal computer/programming/perl/whatever projects after they have completed their Real Life(TM) jobs??

The I.S. departement at my company is fairly small, 5 people. Out of those 5, I am the only person who hacks around at night after work. So Far, I've only met one other person IRL that has a similar outlook. (Ok, maybe I need to get out more.. :) )

My co-workers think I'm quite crazy, "How can you continue to work on computers at night after you work on them all day????" I really had to think about this for a while. Am I obsessive? Am I an addict?? Am I an introvert? A total luser?

Finally I came to the conclusion that I was none of those things. What I am is passionate and I seek excellence and that is what makes me different from my coworkers. All of the people who I respect in life have that special something that makes them the best in their field--Passion.

I feel that in order to achieve Excellence in anything, perl included, you must have an unending passion to learn and experience. This passion is what drives us to overcome negative experience (IRL and here on perlmonks.org :) ) and frustration that inevitably results during the continual learning process.

I stress continual learning process because Excellence is not a destination, but a journey. Fortunately, on the journey to perl excellence, I've found perlmonks.org to help me along the way.

Thanks

In reply to A Key to Excellence, Passion by fongsaiyuk

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