> As for myself, I'm hitting 40 now, and have absolutely no power over others whatsoever, and that's a pretty tough spot to be in, because now I'm bored with th

> As for myself, I'm hitting 40 now, and have absolutely no power over others whatsoever, and that's a pretty tough spot to be in, because now I'm bored with the tech stuff but nobody has ever offered me any other kind of work, and I don't expect anyone ever will, and I also expect it will be more and more of a struggle to keep convincing others to even let me keep doing that. Sounds rough. We're not in your situation and probably don't understand the situation very well. If you want to continue the conversation, let us know. I'm not going to offer any kind of rah-rah optimism... Low expectations might be a good way to go. A few questions: have you asked for other kinds of work? How have you asked? Have you asked yourself this question: Are you selling or are you buying? (What I mean is this: in terms of linguistics and positioning, are you offering something of value or are you asking others to give you value?) Ideally, you would present your "ask" in a way where both sides benefit. (Apologies if all this is obvious or uninteresting... I'm just starting the conversation.) What else do we need to know so that we can offer thoughts that might be useful?