[CalRobert]

Apparently, when your ex-husband whom you started dating at 17 is an abusive asshole who says you're an idiot, your interests are stupid, and you'll never amount to anything, you may, upon divorce, feel a strong sense of internal motivation to do all that stuff you always wanted to do, and make decisions not based purely on financial rationality.

Also, I totally understand the whole "why in the world would you pay for that" but if you work in tech you're in a fairly privileged position. The thing I desperately wanted to do most of my life happens to pay well. Somebody else desperately wanted to work in museums/heritage/archaeology and share knowledge. And museums do good work - one of the projects she worked on was repatriating artifacts stolen from Native American graves in the early 20th century. Since the thieves generally didn't take good notes, it could require a lot of time, effort, and knowledge to determine an artifact's provenience. That was more related to her undergrad studies - the graduate degree was more about a mix of preservation, conservation, etc.

I'm not sure it's worse than making some F2P game or Tinder for dogs. But it's definitely less profitable.