Steve Martin's Autobiography starts with the following phrase:
"I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success... enjoyment when performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. After the shows, however, I experienced long hours of elation or misery depending on how the show went..."
I spent the first ten years of my testing career learning, since then I've spent the years refining
and learning. I haven't enjoyed the wild success yet. But then I test software rather than perform stand-up comedy... but on some projects- who can tell the difference?