Sometimes I have doubts. Perhaps not often. I feel that what I'm doing is meaningless, that I'm wasting my life behind a computer when I could be doing... what? I haven't come up with a better answer. But I want to do something that uses my intellectual powers more, that is not just rote, that is not the same damn thing that I've been doing for a decade. But then I get recognition from the outside and poof, for another while, at least, everything is OK.
Yesterday I received a message from a person I didn't know, who told me I was the only person he respected in the world and thanked me for my work. That can't be true, of course, but it massaged my ego in all the right places. What I do, does matter - even if it's rote.