What was your experience taking a break and following your passions?

I got badly burned out by a pathological workplace. I showed up when they'd been going in circles for a year in a half with a product that had huge promise but they couldn't bring it in and the inventor of it had just had a baby. I got it in front of customers in six months, told my doc how bad the situation was and started taking antidepressants preemptively, did another release six months later that landed most of the features they wanted, got dissed by the inventor of the product in a standup meeting, then I quit.

Spent a few years trying to flesh out a vision and sell it. Wound up wasting a lot of time with two salespeople named Bill who couldn't sell their way out of a paper bag. Got into a lot of debt on my home equity line. Got health care through Obamacare. Did a lot of walking in the woods. Played every JRPG ever released for the Playstation Vita. (I think)

For me the semantic web was like a "god of poverty" that shows up in asian religion.

Built a bot and workflow engine to process job applications. Rolled my car. Got one of the first jobs I applied for because my workflow system was such a good story. The folks turned out to be totally disorganized, I chafed at the bit, got let go a year later. Went into therapy. After about 7 months I got a job where I actually go to an office sometimes. I feel appreciated. Paid off my debt. Quit taking antidepressants, which led to a strange series of events...

When I was on my own I joined a standards committee. I feel like I accomplished much of what I was trying to accomplish back then and I've written up a technical report. I sent a draft to the editors but the folks on the committee tell me I might be fighting with them for a long time. It feels like I wrote a second PhD thesis. After about a decade I found the first person I've ever met that really knows how to do things with OWL. Right now I am on another subcommittee that is empowered to revise the standard and not just do research and it looks like I may be getting some consulting work related to it.

For me, it wasn't what I expected at all. Passions are a great distraction, but to go all in on one is not much different from working on something you enjoy.

I learned that I was much better off integrating my passions in to my life in a more sustainable way rather than trying to turn them in to a 'thing' that I was solely focused on. Perhaps I am just... less passionate about my passions than most people, but that is what worked for me.