I'm in my early 40s now, I stopped trying to be non-boring when it comes to my programming-related work after I started to realise that our work (i.e. the work

I'm in my early 40s now, I stopped trying to be non-boring when it comes to my programming-related work after I started to realise that our work (i.e. the work done by us, programmers) is mostly used to do bad societal things: image "AI" is used in different bad places around the world for nefarious purposes, text "AI" is used to filter out and censor the opinions that some of us genuinely believe in, many "cool" data-processing projects help increase the inequalities among us (one of my first personal projects was to implement a "crimes" map for my city, about 15 years ago, the info in there would be used right now by middle-class people so that they would know where to purchase property and where not to purchase property, hence increasing gentrification and perpetuating said inequalities). All in all I'm employed at a boring and excellent technical job right now that, afaik, doesn't do anyone any harm (not even indirectly), and I'm totally happy with that. I'm also not wealthy and I certainly don't have the money to retire anytime soon, so, pluses and minuses.