What is most funny to me in hindsight is how much I had to fight off warnings and offers to learn Macromedia/Flash development... I literally had tons of people who were only making $45k a year telling me I was a dinosaur while I was making $70k investing in PHP dev...

Fast forward to now and PHP jobs are paying over twice the old rate and grinding along while Flash is long dead and buried. Follow your instincts, not your friend's advice. :P