When Unix Stops Being Fun

[Dave Vollenweider]

This has nothing to do with technical problems, but rather it's more of a request for moral support.  This may seem disjointed, so bear with me.

I've been using FreeBSD for over six months now, but I've been using Unix-like operating systems for almost two years.  I started with Red Hat Linux back when Red Hat was making and selling their "consumer-grade" version of Red Hat Linux, then switched to Debian before going to FreeBSD last March.  I now also run NetBSD on one of my machines.

Through all this, I've developed a passion for this type of OS, seeing the elegance, performance, and sheer power of Unix.  This has affected me to the point of me changing my career path.  Before I got into these OSs, I wanted to get into radio.  Now I'd rather either be a system administrator or run my own consulting business for entities that use these types of OSs.  But herein lies the problem I've been having lately: while searching around for what I'd need to know to become a system administrator, I came across this page: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/8/13/131727/462 and I'm overwhelmed by the sheer amount of knowledge I'd have to gain.  It took me almost two years to get to where I am today, and it looks like I've barely scratched the surface of what I'd need to know.  But now, I feel like instead of learning things on my own for fun, I have to learn other things I don't really have a need to learn for myself or that I want to, just so that I can apply that to oth
 er peoples' situations.  The result is that lately learning these OSs has become more of a chore than a fun hobby, and I'm still intimidated by what I need to learn to get to where I want to go.  It almost seems like it's not worth it.

Now, being that I know there are some very experienced people on this list, I'm betting that I'm not the only one that has experienced this, that learning new things in Unix-like OSs becomes more of a chore than something to do for fun.  My question is, what advice would you have for dealing with this?