[paraiuspau]

I am in exactly (from what I understand from your summary) the same position, and I think I feel your pain. I've been/was a UNIX sysadmin from mid 90s to a few years ago, when DevOps took over. Somehow, I just feel like the "good old days" are long-gone, the "identity" of hacker too, and I see many young (I am 42) engineers starting out and really relishing their work. I wish I could have that hunger again, but I am just more interested in sitting idle and "mourning" the past. I also have a counselor, have been a practitioner of mindfulness/meditation for years, etc; I have the tools to apparently cope with this situation, but something fundamental has fled, I fear.

[midburnanon]

I can agree with part of that. I'm lucky - I'm solidly up-to-date, I keep working on new, fun kit (in theory). But the reality.. I find these iterations on problems we solidly solved. I'd like to do something new, not iterate on things I've already done - just with a new company name attached.