I have never considered myself a "self promoter". I was ambitious, which seems different from self promoting to me. For quite a few years, I think that I was ruthlessly ambitious. The ambition set in at some point after I got signals that I was very good at my job. My father was a technician, and many of my early friendships were blue collars, so ambition did not come natural to me.

The ambition petered out in 10-15 years when I decided I was smarter than all my bosses. They figured it out too so it was pretty much a stalemate from then on. :)

I really liked working for myself, being so smart and all, but I guess my old bosses were even dumber than I thought, since being smarter than them was not enough to get me rich.

I try not to let myself agonize over the things I never got around to doing. I just tell myself, hell, I could have done that if I really wanted to. :) Most of the time that satisfies me.

Being alone is good. I get as much alone as I want, in fact, occasionally I feel compelled to come out of my cave to find some human contact. Sometimes I think I trained them too well. :)