And you're asking these people if you should seek professional help... :-)

I think that obviously the thing that draws people here is the freedom. Programming freedom, cultural freedom, and of course the freedom to go down ratholes without actually answer the OP.

Anyway, hang in there. I came at it from both #1 and #2 myself. Five years ago a lot of people were coming at it from the CGI angle. These days a lot of folks come to Perl who are just trying to make sense of large chunks of bioinformation. Doubtless five years from now it'll be another angle of approach. Doesn't much matter, as long as we keep the Perl community a reasonably comfy place to live.