Don't put too much pressure on yourself to find the new perfect career. You could easily take a year off and just try anything that catches your fancy for a br

Don't put too much pressure on yourself to find the new perfect career. You could easily take a year off and just try anything that catches your fancy for a brief amount of time. For example you could do a weekend course on gardening. You could go and spend a weekend at a monastery. You could spend a weekend here (https://tasteofselfsufficiency.co.uk/ask-andrew-2 https://tasteofselfsufficiency.co.uk/ask-andrew-2). The only way to find your passion, unless you already know what it is, is to just try things. Remember you also have the option to continue to do software engineering but less of it - you could do well contracting, especially as you live near London. With regards starting new things late in life - you don't have to make money from dancing. You could do it for the joy of it and make money doing your day job (which might not be the same as you are doing now). What you are doing will require courage though - there will be the temptation to just fall back to what you already know as it is sometimes hard to build a completely new career - at least one that pays as well as software. Good luck with whatever you try to do!