> So basically you don't have a life outside of the job?
I very much did. A big social life. I may have had more of a social life than most, in fact; I have been so lucky.
But that doesn't change that I am the kind of person who drew a lot of self-worth from being able to use my skills to help people, which was actually what helped me find that life in the first place.
As I mentioned elsewhere I have been dealing with really profound burnout for a couple of years. It is extremely difficult. It has made it distressing to try to cope with busy social environments; I am not hiding but life has changed and other people's lives move on. (Including other freelancers you work with.)
Without a sense of engagement from what I do for a living, I am left with a lot less of a life. And the world of tech has changed in so many ways in just the time I have been trying to recover that it feels difficult to find a place again. It is taking an enormous amount of mental energy to catch up when I have sometimes only been able to focus for about an hour in any three days.
Lately things have been better, and while I am AI-cynical I have been enjoying digging into a new topic and working out what I think, but doing this past the age of fifty when you're burned out is hard work.
> How old is a bit too old?
I was talking about rethinking priorities and really seeking a family life for myself there, and the answer is that I am enough over fifty that there is no fair way to approach that, given my current mental health.
Some things, I'm afraid, do just one day stop being possible. You may not get a do-over after, say, forty-five.