Nine to five

It took me a while to make my self see and surrender to the fact that not all people I work, I've worked and will work with me in the future, have accepted The Life, or the way of a software engineer or craftsman.
Oh, how I've grown wiser and older. I just might grow a beard and be a guru of some sorts. Certainly there is a niche I can squeeze in a pretend to know what I'm talking about.
But alas, I didn't grow wiser just battered down by the entropy that is the , oh so typical , human philosophy of working from nine to five and then at five o' one forgetting that work even exists.
Well I can understand that. Work is work, and it isn't the whole life. But for the way of a software engineer or craftsman isn't just work , the daily grudge of projects, meetings, coding and testing the constant battle of will and code and the requirements that just won't fit into the application mold. It is just not.
For me it is something different, something more. A thing to be proud of , something to leave for posterity. Is the way of living where you read, learn, exercise your self and improve your self. Year after, year continuously. And the work is the place where you apply your skills, your learning, your spirit into something tangible, something you can be proud of, an achievement.
Am I , or people like me, better then the rest. I think not. We are just different. I often found that people with the nine to five mentality are predictable, they approach each problem in a similar fashion, they apply the same solutions every time, day after day, application after application. On the other hand, the same errors are repeated, the same problems occur nothing is improved until pressure is applied from the outside, or if not they succumb to the technology wave, left behind with outdated knowledge and if something doesn't come by, a new project or a new job where the can learn new skills in a nine to five way they are really frakked up.
This is what scares me the most, as a developer, to let my self loose, to relax and to in a matter of years outdated, jobless, and skill less.
We work in teams. We seldom do any work alone. Teams can be organized differently, they can work differently. But one constant remains often, in teams there are some people that want to improve them self and the the work they are doing and those who just can't see the need to bother to do so.
For this was an enormous amount of stress, battling such teammates day after day until it downed me. I can't change them. I can't force them. I just can behave with my code, my tasks the way I think is right and if they'll follow me the batter or if not I will refactor their code or leave it as is.