The realization itself came to me when I was listening to Carl Sagan read from
Pale Blue Dot. For an unseemingly long minute, it took the breath out of my body and when I finally drew it in again, the near obsessive voraciousness with which I attacked certain things (often to the detriment of my own well-being, in favor of some demented work-ethic) suddenly lifted. Just a bit at first. But enough.
The most dramatic impact is that I stopped letting a project I started in 1997 (when I was 20) continue to suck me dry, like a vampire. I ran it far after I'd entirely lost interest in it. Partially because I felt it was my one meaningful contribution to anything, so far. I started it in 1997 and did every piece of work involved in it from building the servers to writing all of the backend code and front-end presentation and dealing with users (it was an auction site with a niche sub-culture twist and a screw-eBay and their fees selling point). When you invest that much time (many thousands of hours) and money and emotion into a project, you feel an obligation to maintain it. When you know there are tens of thousands of regular users (100k, at the peak) depending on it for socializing and even their income in some cases, you feel obligated. And, like with bad relationships, the familiarity and all of that invested time obligates you.
For me, it got to the point where I wouldn't read my email anymore. I wouldn't post in my own forums. I wouldn't even visit my own site for months at a time. I would rely on a script to ensure the site was up and responding, because even just seeing the front page load filled me with anxiety and a degree of loathing. I ran this for twelve years. The last six of them almost entirely out of some misguided sense that I owed it to people. Or that I owed it to myself (that ceasing it would somehow waste all of my personal investment in it).
One day, I decided that was it. I had to cut the cord with the project and the community and everything that it ever meant. I published a grateful thank you and goodbye (sans the details about how I had come to loath everything about it) with a notice that I would terminate it in three months. And on that date, I simply pulled the plug.
I still have a workaholic mentality, where work is concerned. But at least my every waking moment outside of work isn't spent dealing with users or mediating conflicts between them or fixing bugs or feeling that I had to get around to re-writing the entire code-base all over again. Or feeling that I needed to respond to all the requests over the years for me to "sell my code" to people by actually polishing it up and making it a product (I didn't). Instead, I can read a book, watch a movie, listen to music, play a videogame, or even just take a long nap. All things I rarely ever did the previous dozen years.
Further, while I spent those dozen years essentially feeding that monster with every ounce of leftover energy and not having the mental bandwidth left over to ponder future ideas and ventures, I now have some free space and time that allows me to pursue something new. I don't have anything yet. I never really was a huge "idea" guy (that project was my only shining moment of brilliance, to be honest). But, now, I can.
You can find the specific segment I refer to from Pale Blue Dot, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M
And you can find the text, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#Reflections_by_Sa...