Appreciate you posting this. For what it's worth, I'm in the same boat.
I basically achieved my goals in life and am now very comfortable. I could just continue to work and keep up-to-date and find myself old and tired in short time.
I'm poignantly aware of this window of opportunity which is closing. I'm still young(ish), and still have some physical and mental energy... The question is what will I use it for? What would bring me happiness when I am old, sitting in a wheelchair, recounting my life?
As someone who has struggled with mental health most of their life I have vowed to never have kids. For many, children are the answer to this existential question. For myself it will need to be something else and I'm not sure yet what that is. To be honest, I'm worried I may never find it. I was lucky enough to find my first passion (software) but after so many years, the mind yearns for new experiences and to produce something of meaning, something I can be proud of.
For what it's worth, you can still have an impact on youth without being a parent yourself. There's gradations from adoption and fostering to teaching and mentoring. Empathetic inter-generational experiences are beautiful for everyone involved in them. As you age, it literally keeps you young.
Just work on a side project, artistic longing, hobby, craft skill, church, new language, charity, ... And if those are ill-formed for you, or lacking a pull, just go travelling...
Give yourself a deadline. Not a deadline to achieve, but a deadline to decide.
Stay in your country, explore the east and the west, the loud and the quiet, the beautiful and the ugly. And pay complete attention to every person in front of you, at all times, in attentive and generous detail.
Travel a continent, or the world. Start somewhere you have curiosity to be satisfied: proximity, historical knowledge, smattering of the language, distant family history, old friend, current networked contact... Then just go.
Don't be instagram-deluded and selfie-stick blind. Commit to not taking any photos, it's a liberation. Let loved-ones know you are safe, but no reporting back to a once-before and never-again esteemed group of fake friends. Yet always look at everything with a photographer's eye - still and moving. Look. See. Be still. Be moved.
Focus on something concrete, but unimportant, where the journey will be the objective. A pilgrimage, the museums of Europe, a long distance trail, the temples of Asia, a minimal beach, a bustling third world city. Become a short-time expert in the music scene, enjoy a local festival, work on a local farm or fishing boat. Understand tea or tea tree oil, spinning or spinakkers, avocadoes or cocoa, crab fishing or craps tables.
Put quiet aquisition of wisdom above loud narrow achievement.
Stay, linger, go.
Watch, wait, listen, decide.
I promise you will soon have some important personal decisions to make.
I basically achieved my goals in life and am now very comfortable. I could just continue to work and keep up-to-date and find myself old and tired in short time.
I'm poignantly aware of this window of opportunity which is closing. I'm still young(ish), and still have some physical and mental energy... The question is what will I use it for? What would bring me happiness when I am old, sitting in a wheelchair, recounting my life?
As someone who has struggled with mental health most of their life I have vowed to never have kids. For many, children are the answer to this existential question. For myself it will need to be something else and I'm not sure yet what that is. To be honest, I'm worried I may never find it. I was lucky enough to find my first passion (software) but after so many years, the mind yearns for new experiences and to produce something of meaning, something I can be proud of.