I am fortunate enough to have retired at 56. I am 60 now. My working life was mostly in startups, which is intense and all-consuming, and honestly, I let my wo

I am fortunate enough to have retired at 56. I am 60 now. My working life was mostly in startups, which is intense and all-consuming, and honestly, I let my work substitute for many other things in my life. I have a wonderful family, and I am close to my children, but I don't have a lot of hobbies. So here I am at 60, bored some of the time. I still enjoy writing software, so I do that, but it's difficult to stay motivated. There is so much great software available for free that it's not obvious how I can contribute. (Yes, I suppose I could find an interesting open source project and contribute.) I am also relearning enough mathematics to make some progress in understanding machine learning -- after seeing the promise of AI crashing so many times, it is very cool to see it being fulfilled at last. I am teaching again, (I started out as an academic). My wife has suggested that I go back to work. There are two reasons why I don't. First, I left because working for a company ruins what I enjoy about writing software. Idiot managers, endless and pointless meetings, rushed deadlines forcing bad compromises, poor product management. And of course, I lose the complete freedom I have in doing what I want when I want. Second, if I am bored and missing a purpose in life at the moment, going back to work would only hide the problem. Early in my startup career, I would adopt the founder's idea as my own, and it became my purpose in life. Now, I am more realistic about founders and their ideas (or maybe I'm not running across any that I like). No, substituting work goals for personal goals seems like a mistake. The real problem is finding something to do with my time that is both absorbing and meaningful to me.