Comment by ChuckMcM

Some folks aspire to the minimum amount of work and the maximum amount of pay. And they are shocked when they get laid off after a decade of that, that nobody wants to hire them. Like you I really enjoy the work so if I'm not getting the work I need at work I'm doing various things outside of work. (lately it is designing a 3D printer) I'm not sure when I realized that time doing nothing was just getting closer to dead with nothing to show for it, but once I had internalized that, idling wasn't really an option any more.