I began writing a whitepaper, then my wife said to do something else

I've had some ideas around distributed entity component systems (ECS) for a while now. I grew up programming massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and when I was programming them, I use to use object-oriented programming patterns. Since I learned ECS, I've always wanted to try an MMO framework in that pattern, but never had the chance.

I probably just lost most of you with the above paragraph, but the point is that after I started writing the first two paragraphs of this idea then I needed to go to dinner and I told her what I was up to on a Sunday evening.

She then said, Watch a movie or play video games or something. I asked why? She said you're gonna burn out! She knows how much I work, but also balance family time with a 1-year-old, and have a social life on top of that - so yeah, honestly, she and I could have passed out at 7 PM if we so wished. (She eventually passed out at 9:30 PM that day)

I eventually watched OtherLife which was a random sci-fi on Netflix. I effin love sci-fi and will try anything related to time / multi-dimensional reality, etc. It was pretty good actually (especially for people in startups with co-founders).

Long story short, the question I had to myself is - I feel refreshed and a bit enlightened from the movie but did I lose an opportunity to output something great during a natural state of motivation? Will I be motivated to write the next time I have a free moment? Or did I lose out on the catalyst to write and publish and open source proposal for distributed ECS?

There is no answer to this because I think I would have been happy with either path I took. But I think zoning out on a sci-fi probably got me more energy to write and share this today.

Moral of the short story: reflect on the paths you choose and don't believe in a best path. Just make sure all paths would make you happy.