But I have a family to feed, so I can't just take a year off and travel or do anything crazy.
What's a good alternate career path I could take for a while to get a breath of fresh air?
1. Take a week or two off. Go on vacation. Maybe you just need a short break.
2. Find a new job as a developer. The change in environment (people and/or technologies that you work with) may do the trick.
3. Switch to a PM role for a while.
4. If you think being a developer is no longer fun, consider a career change.
Whatever you do, do not wait too long for the problem to fix itself. Do something now, before you start to drain out and find yourself unable to muster the energy and enthusiasm to come up with a solution.
That hits home. I have periods in my life where I have had less of a social life, and during those I definitely found myself going to the grocery store more. Reading your comment I realize just how much of that was to see other folks. Same with the coffee shop
Incidentally, if there exists a job orthogonal to your skill set as a developer that you can jump into and make upwards of half your current salary, that's a good sign you're not billing enough today.
- How old are you? - How senior are you in your profession? - Are you the sole provider for your family? - How much savings/equity/etc do you have floating around? - What other skillsets do you have that you could leverage?
The problem (I found, anyway) with 'alternative careerpaths' are that they either require some sort of previous experience (to get them, or earn a good wage, depending on where you live), or the ones that don't will have 1e10 other people lining up for it (again, depending on where you live).
It may be more productive to find a way to cut down on expenses and tap into savings, and try and learn something new, or get in touch with your inner geek again. A side benefit might be getting to spend more time with the kids/wife, or discover a talent or skill you didn't know you had.
My experience has shown that I don't want to get out of development, but having to do seemingly meaningless drivel for other people sucks the life out of our profession. I'm going to try and actively keep that spark alive going forward (not sure yet how, but at least it's a start).
I'm happy to chat privately if you're interested...
Time to maintain motorbikes or sailing boats. Do you know any craft, e.g. sewing, that could be used to make money in that market. Motorbike saddles, tarpaulins, seats and cushions are things I produce when tired from coding. Hand crafted quality sells well, and builds up a customer base that is even more loyal then a mainframe service contract.
Especially the biker scene has the tendency of regular up or outs. Some bikers move up, others move out, when ever a club closes, or is patched over. Same happens to good quality saddles also. So even if you do not sell to the Angles right now, they will might ride your saddles in 10 or 20 years, and they will be top paying customers.
Same same but different with sailing boats. Even if one can not move a tarpaulin from one boat to an other, like you could do with a Harley saddle, the sailors themself move up or out regular. They either buy a bigger boat, or quit sailing. Selling quality ensures a loyal customer, who tells his club.
You'll soon be invaded by wanna be customers every winter, if done right. Do not take to many, keep it to a maximum of 2-3 month of 20 hours work per week. Some of the sailing club customers might even become software customers next summer.
Other than that - I think it's hard to give an advice about career that would be both fun and wouldn't require a lot of skill to start with.
But if you are willing to invest time and effort - writing, painting, and computer graphics are the thing that I massively enjoy in my free time. I bet you could use your programming skills in 3D graphics as well.
Also - some sort of internet marketing. It isnt usually considered fun or worth doing among programmers, but it can actually be fun and profitable, and obviously a useful startup-related skill that you can utilize to make/sell your own products if you ever want to.
Maybe that's where I've been failing. Nothing I've done lately has been inherently meaningful. May I ask what you ended up doing?
Also when I get out I can go back to school and I'll have a huge leg up on government jobs. OTOH, if I can become a warrant officer I'll just stay in.
Yes it's risky/dangerous. I can't deny that. But I can say for sure it will get you in shape and builds a lot of discipline and character.
So I guess what I am saying is that maybe you can find a place where you can continue on your career path while saving your sanity.
I did consulting at an HVAC company that had the vibe I am describing. I am not saying these positions are abundant, but if you check craigslist, depending on where you live, you might find these either under the software/QA jobs or under the computer gigs sections.
EDIT: Sorry didn't read the question well enough. Gardening isn't an good alternative career path to programming IMHO, just a nice distraction. Even helps you think about programming and/or other problems.