I used to be a prolific ranter with an interest in Lisp. Running into Eric's posts inspired me to give that up - I didn't want online rants to be my legacy. Related, Xah Lee's crazy writings inspired me to take my social life seriously and not over-share on the internet. Both of them, and the rest of the comp.lang.lisp, taught me that getting stuff done was more important than making sure I was using the most aesthetically pure computing environment. Another lisp programmer, Philip Greenspun, also demonstrated the negative effects of too much writing online. In addition, he showed me that photography was mostly a factor of how much film and equipment one can afford, which inspired me to give that up and focus more on music and other things I had natural talent for. Finally, and only related in form, reading Ludwig Wittgenstein's later "notebook" style writings inspired me to give up on philosophy and enter industry instead of philosophy grad school.