Your professional half-life

I'd say that getting out of web development for a few days, weeks, even months is not such a big deal. Being a rapid learner is a re-requisite for getting anywhere in a cutting edge field. So as long as your learning ability follows a Malthusian growth model you'll be just fine spacing out for a few months. Heck, you may come back with a different perspective on things.

The way it was explained to me:

When you are young, you are excited about what is cool/what is interesting/the latest technology. You usually lack experience.

After several years and/or several projects, you realize it's not about the technology - every project has the same issues/opportunities. It's all the same. Some projects may bring something new to learn but, really, unless you are working for Google or Facebook or a startup, they're all the same.

As you grow older and wiser and start to mentor the young 'uns who are excited about working on X technology, you realize that you might just not have as much enthusiasm. At that point, you may transition out to management and/or starting a family. And the cycle will continue...

I've always thought that software is a young man's game, whereas law is an old man's game.

This is because when new legislation is introduced, the first thing that any discussion of it does is to consider what the law was 200 years ago. New laws are mostly tweaks on existing laws (including case law), and will be interpreted as such by the courts. Even entirely new laws are interpreted in terms of existing laws. Of course, there are some new laws and new cases to keep up to date with.

But compare this with programming, where most successful practitioners didn't have or need any idea of previous languages or approaches. Which is probably one of the reasons that software is reinvented every decade or so. Law is not.

Looks like half-life is inversely proportional to pay.

Sport people have short half-life.