[VLM]

My father never really retired, he just took longer breaks between shorter jobs. In between he toured national parks.

Obviously for financial/economic system reasons this isn't open to people anymore, think of the cost of medical insurance or cost of real estate, it was much easier to be independently wealthy in the 80s/90s (for a small enough value of wealthy of course). But something similar could probably still be arranged today, somehow.

Another thing to think about is not all programming jobs are excruciatingly boring. Boring jobs should pay a substantial premium to be staffed such that you can afford mental health vacations each weekend of arbitrary expense, to recover.

Also in my starving student days I worked some physical labor jobs that were as excruciatingly boring as your description implies for programming. You feel physically better and more energized if you move more, but you'll be just as mentally bored.