As I was walking down the paseo in the south of Spain last month, I experienced a painful identity crisis. It hit me that I hadn't been enjoying my work lately. Going to work felt like a drudge. On and off, I still feel the same. Most days, I overcome this feeling when I dive deep into some technical problem and try to chip away at it.
I work to earn money and use that money to level up myself =)
Oops, I had a typo that omitted an important "don't":
> if you're a programmer, you *don’t* need to find the craft of programming intrinsically meaningful to do it
It was probably self-evident based on tone of the post but I've corrected it for accuracy.