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While I am a software developer, somehow the thought of working for another company depresses me a lot at the moment. I guess ultimately I enjoy thinking about concepts more than the actual programming. Programming is a means to an end to realize my ideas. But programming for another company would mean programming for programming's sake. (Just trying to understand why the thought depresses me so much).

And yet, I need money. I wish I could think of any other way to earn minimum living expenses than developing. I'd love to just work in a cafe or a book shop for a couple of days, but I worry that it might not pay well enough.

Part time developer jobs are also hard to come by (which would leave me time to work on my own projects, hopefully alleviating my depression).

Maybe somebody here has ideas for a middle road?

It would also be great to work not sitting at a desk all the time.

"the stupid URL bar that explodes into a list of sites whenever I type even a single letter there"

Um, that feature is brilliant, it's the only way I can still handle my bookmarks. Haven't tried Google Chrome, so I don't know if they have come up with a better solution. Have they?

"I'd kill for a decent test suite and fully-automated deployment. Kill!"

Then why don't you write one? I suspect you don't have the time - well back then when you created the system, you did not have the time either. So the bottom line again seems to be: it is not actually THAT important. Otherwise you would make the time.