Hey beej71, I'm 41 and I love advice from people with more life experience than me.
I also love teaching (not particularly great at it, but not the worst) and taught SALSA dancing for a few years. The money was okayish (enough for myself but not to feed my children) but I LOVED being around ppl.
I wasn't talented in dancing but my talent in programming really made me happy (and well paid), so that kind of sucks. Definitely same as you, I'd even say programming can be my 90% of joy and effort (in a bad way sometimes, but I manage to talk myself into dialing it down)
I can't imagine the hell teachers are going through, especially coding, with AI.
Luckily I have a lot of weird interests and some can pay well (for example, I've had a decent success teaching people how to lose weight doing intermittent fasting, imagine the randomness of my interests)
What is your next plan?
I wasn't joking on becoming a yoga teacher, as cliché as it sounds, because I did it and quite successfully so (I was young, handsome, and single back then, and my classes were PACKED. I'm still handsome but the other two are gone. People paid cash so I had a lot of bills in my home lol)
I also love teaching (not particularly great at it, but not the worst) and taught SALSA dancing for a few years. The money was okayish (enough for myself but not to feed my children) but I LOVED being around ppl.
I wasn't talented in dancing but my talent in programming really made me happy (and well paid), so that kind of sucks. Definitely same as you, I'd even say programming can be my 90% of joy and effort (in a bad way sometimes, but I manage to talk myself into dialing it down)
I can't imagine the hell teachers are going through, especially coding, with AI.
Luckily I have a lot of weird interests and some can pay well (for example, I've had a decent success teaching people how to lose weight doing intermittent fasting, imagine the randomness of my interests)
What is your next plan?
I wasn't joking on becoming a yoga teacher, as cliché as it sounds, because I did it and quite successfully so (I was young, handsome, and single back then, and my classes were PACKED. I'm still handsome but the other two are gone. People paid cash so I had a lot of bills in my home lol)