I recently left the CTO position to return to contract programming. The job was 90 miles from my home, so the travel was taking it's toll on my sanity and I hated being away from the family so much.
It was an amicable split. They just weren't ready for me yet. I was hired on to do scalability work for their website, but the company is so dynamic and growing so fast, that I spent most of my time working on new features to support our current customers and to woo new clients. I'm leaving them in good hands, though. Just before my departure, we hired a really sharp architect. I hope to work with these guys again in the future. They're a great bunch of folks.
My current source of income is a contract with my home state's Department of Education. The new project is more in line with the technical challenges that drew me to the CTO gig, and the hours are such that I get to spend a lot more time at home with the little lady and rugrats.
With all this new-found free time, I'm getting the itch to create again. I'm working with an artist buddy to create general programming and art content for a site that will parallel codetopia.com, and we'll be announcing it when it's more presentable. I hope to do more art, and he hopes to do more code. So far, it's a very motivating arrangement.
If things go as planned, I may even start work on a new, multi-volume XNA book that's been brewing in my noggin for a while. My artist buddy would be heavily involved in that project as well. That's a big commitment, though. If you think the first book was crap and you want to save me a year of torture, please speak up now. :P
-- joe