"Passion" is doing something just for the sake of it!
perhaps just for yourself; with no external motivation, no compulsion, no validation, & not even caring about recognition!
You don't want feedback. You want confirmation delivered in the tone of feedback. That's why you ask people who like you, and why you get angry when someone tells you the truth.
The brain is designed to learn through constant repetition and active, hands-on involvement.
Through such practice and persistence, any skill can be mastered.
Nobody is ahead of you. Your are in a different race. It's just you. Alone. With your thoughts, ideas, philosophy, your gift, your idiosyncrasies. And the only thing that matters is what you do with what you have.
When software was expensive - thin, horizontal, best-of-breed software stacks extracted rents across every business.
Now that software is cheap - value moves to vertically integrated businesses that deliver opinionated end-to-end experiences.
Any incredibly hard thing pursued diligently has an ability to feel like purpose. Those who chase hard problems often never struggle to find purpose in life.
The man who needs to be liked cannot lead. He will soften standards, tolerate decay, reward weakness, and call it compassion. Leadership requires the courage to disappoint people in service of a higher outcome. If everyone is comfortable under your command, your standards are probably dying quietly.