Love computers outside of ${dayJob}!

Work on some open source projects and dig into some bugs, become that crazy but fun neighborhood guy always building some contraption in his garage, volunteer as a mentor for advanced STEM programs like FIRST FRC, volunteer at/run a local computer reuse program where you help take used computers and get them into a state people in need of one can use, build those things you always thought sounded fun to work on at ${dayJob} but could never "justify" to management, build and operate a retro computing collection.

Some of these scratch the tinkering itch, some of these scratch the community itch, some of these scratch the meaning itch, and so on, but all allow you to have a goal, sense of purpose, and to love computers however much you want without having to make money doing it.

Getting initial momentum on this can seem tricky, same as for careers, but once you get going the time at ${dayJob} starts to feel like it gets in the way of loving computers instead of the other way around.

You literally have one of the easiest things to retire to. You can do whatever you want with computers when you retire and for the rest of your life.

If you were an ER doctor and loved saving lives it would be a little harder.

Hear me out: you would get to choose which problems to solve!

But I get you; a job finds well-scoped problems and spoon feeds them to you, it can be daunting to look for a worthy problem to solve on your own. Think of it as a new skill you'll have to develop.

There's a big ocean of problem solving on computers that doesn't require a day job! I find it very fun. I mean I started on computers for fun when I was young and it turned into a job so being retired means I can just go back to working on the stuff I like in particular.

There are tons of projects and communities you can participate in. From embedded on up. A math geek I know (who is underused at work) did a lot of work helping with filtering out electrical noise for https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight for example, but there are tons of communities out there.

Honestly when given downtime I generate more computer problems than I could ever hope to solve. I cant even fathom being bored with a computer. My mother used to accuse me of breaking the home PC just to keep myself busy and it was not far from the truth.