Never found paddle shifters to be in the same league as a manual transmission even in modern high performance cars. There's always that bit of lag and delay with automatic that there isn't on a manual.
Yes and no. Sometimes it's not about the destination but about experiencing the journey. From the post it seems like the author extracted the value they wanted to extract over the years. Knowing when to give up is difficult, especially when you've sunk a lot of cost into the project and feel like you have to finish it. The thing is, you don't have to and it's perfectly acceptable to put it on hold indefinitely.
In the end you'll still have all those experiences with you and that's what you paid for with your time.