How to stop dreaming about working in other fields?

I did this myself thirteen years ago - I quit my well paying software job, bought a bunch of goats, and built a cheese business. I'm just now in the process of winding our dairy and cheese business down - it was an amazing period of personal and professional growth, money wasn't an issue, but the complete lack of flexibility (exacerbated by having to milk animals twice daily, every day, for 300 days in a row) eventually got to me.

I was out trying to bottle train 40+ hungry goat kids this winter in -13C temperatures when I decided that I didn't want to do this anymore. My wife and I decided to shutter everything a couple days later.

We don't have any regrets - I learned FAR more in running my own business in an area that wasn't previously my expertise, than had I stuck around doing things in software development. However, here I am again looking to find another tech job.

I'm fortunate in that I've kept a lot of tech skills current, in that I've had multiple personal projects or freelance contracts during slower winter periods. I can safely say thought that I have farming and cheese making out of my mind, for the foreseeable future. Should I ever want to do it again, I'll book myself 3 weeks in France, go milk and make cheese with a small cheesemaker there, and enjoy that all the day-to-day problems are someone else's. :)

Every job is cool until you start doing it professionally. I was an electrical engineer before I became a programmer. Then I realized that most jobs are like running on a mouse wheel. You're earning as long as you're running but the money stops if you stop running. Plus, if you don't like running, you can't outsource it to someone else. But if you're running a business, you can do whatever you want. Don't like something, find someone else to do it. The business grows leaps and bounds when it's successful. In a couple of years you can have a business that's worth a cool million if you're successful. You have to learn how to sell though. And until you do, you'll be a slave to your job wondering whether the grass is greener somewhere else. Working on cars, place and ships sounds rosy until you realize that you'll be working on a really small mundane part over and over because that's what you're good at and that's what brings value to your employer. And the employer will try to squeeze every bit of profits out of you while paying as low as possible until you start making your own deals and learn negotiation.

For a given field that I daydream about, I visit the subreddit dedicated to that profession. Especially given the rise in r/antiwork-like sentiment over the past few years, what I've noticed from many of these profession-specific subreddits is that many of the most popular posts from the last 2-3 years consist of people posting grievances about their field. Through reading about the most negative, stressful, and irrational aspects of a given profession, you defintely end up seeing that grass isn't necessarily greener in many cases.

While I realize that people who like their jobs likely won't make posts on Reddit to rave about their respective position, and that a subreddit is likely to attract people who want a place to vent (just as people are more likely to post online reviews about a business given a negative experience rather than a positive one), through reading about realities that many people face, I quickly realize it's not all roses & sunshine on the other side of the grass and each field comes with its own set of frustrating challenges.

What I do is may be a cynical way of looking at things, but especially if you currently have a well-paid, fairly comfortable position, you shouldn't take your current standing for granted, and realize that there are loads of people in other fields who'd rather be in your shoes.

Go find the HN equivalent of physics or "real" engineering and listen to people complain about their work? /s

Or just use your current skillset to work together with others on side projects or simulations related to those areas?

Eg. I am a programmer, but I love fighter jets, missiles, guided bombs and such. I will never get a job in those fields, can't pursue war and destruction as a hobby, so I do things like learn how missile/bomb guidance systems work - laser, GPS, radiation, heat seeking, etc and try to build mini, super low fidelity versions of those systems in my spare time. Think off the shelf microcontrollers and components on model rockets and projectiles dropped from consumer drones...

This has sort of scratched my itch for these things...see if you can find something similar that works for you?

Identify the difference between dreaming (plausible things) and fantasizing (implausible things). Make a decision about what your imagination is providing to you and that categorization process may relieve you of spending cycles on the thing that won’t happen and which largely functions as a way to keep yourself burdened.

It’s also okay to have a mental funeral for a long-standing dream which is now an unsatisfactory, or not necessary, fantasy. Some thoughts / dreams / imagined paths can become whispers in the mind. And gone.

I have a degree in Chemical Engineering and worked in industry for 10 years. I was happy at points, very unhappy at other points. Changing to SWE was one of the best things I've ever done for myself, although I've just started... maybe I'll find myself unhappy at some point in the future.

I could write at length about it but it is kind of personal. I'll just say, I used to help design "cool shit". Huge oil refinery units made of steel full of high pressure poisonous and explosive gasses. Lots of responsibility, I loved that part of it. Now I do web dev. No responsibility (relatively speaking). But I fucking love it. I'm having more fun as a SWE than I ever did as a ChemE. The tight feedback cycle and flow state you can get into doing test driven development is like nothing else, it is truly amazing. I look forward to work, and when I go home I'm already thinking about what I'm going to work on tomorrow morning. Admittedly, I did also do that at points as a ChemE.

Maybe you just need to get out of sales and start building shit full time again?

Or fuck it dude, maybe doing traditional engineering would be cool too. If you've got some money in the bank and don't have a family then just fucking go for it, why not?

One thing you might do: start a gratitude practice. Every morning, journal and write out three things you are grateful for. That has really helped me not feel so frantic about making changes to my life, even if they're changes that need to be made.

Most non tech fields will not have the flexibility of WFH etc. Pay will most likely be less unless you are a big shot Doctor/Lawyer (requires decades of accreditations so thats ruled out) or Investment Banker/Private equity associate/managers (extremely high barrier to entry and requires elite schools/experience already which you don't have).

So the "other fields" that you dream of will most likely be paid much less on an average with much less work life balance. For example, if you work on cars, you will most likely have to commute to an office or even a factory with terrible working conditions for the most part. Reality of how it works.

Oh man, I don't really know what to say or how to begin. So many angles with this.

I'm about 75% through my job switch after working in a different career / industry for about 10 years (still do some projects 25% of the time in old industry).

I'm going to come from another angle on this one. What is your motivation? Are you bored? What are the soft issues? Do you have kids, a mortgage, what state of life are you in? Do you plan to be employed or self employed? Are you confusing working on cars / planes / ships as in engineer in an office on CAD with being physically on them and turning wrenches?

Talk to your friends and ask them to share the warts of their job with you. Every job has them.

I also did a 3 month, 1 day/week internship at a sustainability consulting company in an area I was interested in. I learned a lot about bees and also that there was very little money in sustainability consulting. That led me to treat the interest as a hobby rather than a potential career. If you can swing this and keep your current job, highly recommend.

FOMO is an expression of insecurity, that im not good enough here, so there it would be different. But guess what... The same person, you, is still there with the same insecurity. So what happens? FOMO again

See a pattern? Work on the insecurity and the FOMO will cure itself.

There is no avoidance of the emotional work needed

Do it? There's free content for physics degrees online. Start working through a calculus and physics 101 class. You'll probably hate it and kill that dream hah or you'll love and enroll.

I did this, was thinking about going back to school. Now I'm not to sure. It doesn't feel as cool as I thought it would be

What has worked for me is to do it as a hobby on my spare time. Of course that only applies to fields you can do as a hobby and place some heavy limitations.

For physics / real engineering, you can take classes after-work. For more physical jobs, you can do that in your backyard/driveway/other space. Obviously this place limitation: no super heavy machinery, and the scale has to fit, you can't exactly keep a full-sized plane or ship in your backyard.

Provided you have enough money, it's a matter of picking the right budget.

Some examples of itches I scratched doing that:

- photography (10 years ago, when smartphones weren't that good). I bought an entry-level professional camera and got started. Quickly realized I loathed picking and editing photos, but I now have a basic skillset about that.

- electronics. I have a box full of random bits, built a few random contraption that work for me. But getting to a real product requires lots more skills I'm not really interested in. I'm happy just having that box for anything I want to tinker with (and the occasional device repair by changing a blown capacitor, which makes me look like a wizard).

- bartending. I have a ~70 bottles bar in my apartment now (it covers a 2mx2m wall mostly) and can do pretty much any cocktail you want. I also bartended in a non-profit bar. I like the actual bartending, but the "bad customer" part is awful. Plus I know full well actual bartending is not well paid and has horrible hours.

- auto mechanic. Latest I'm currently in. I bought a 20yo car, rent a closed underground parking spot to keep it and my tools (big city, I don't have a driveway) and do the maintenance, repairs, and try to get it back to factory state. I also work on friends & family car whenever I get the chance. It's not the flashy things you see on Youtube, but it gets your hands greasy and you get to do it. There is no way I'd take that job professionally though: low pay, low consideration, nearly always unhappy customers because you're the bearer of bad news.

Anyway, that's my suggestion to scratch those itches without actually changing your whole life.

People do change careers & go back. You don’t have to think in all or nothing terms. Just have a bit of savings and manageable cost of living so you’ve got some financial freedom to try things out.

If you’re willing to go to where the jobs are and, perhaps, take a pay cut you can contribute software engineering or UI expertise to many stem projects. There’s a number of little companies doing such work and they have domain knowledge in spades. What they probably don’t have or have enough of is how to make modern, robust, maintainable software. Particularly user facing software. Things like ai or modelling applied to medicine, material design, etc.

You won’t sell ads or collect data. It’s probably licensed code and it helps people make stuff.

Ok, how much of your income are you willing to give up? How many years later do you want to retire? How much less time do you want with your family? How much less money do you want your descendants to have?

Because that's often the truth. Software pays well and offers a pretty good lifestyle. Doing things that are "more fun" means less money and less work-life balance. Or you can just take up a stimulating hobby or work on a side project.

Feel the same sometimes. However, I'm wondering if that isn't just a "the grass is always greener on the other side" kind of problem. Have you considered starting doing something in these fields as a hobby instead? Have always liked working with CS and EE, but after starting to work with it, it sometimes feels like it's becoming more of a chore than something fun.

If you’ve been in software dev for so long (for me 20 years) - things start to get easy so you need more of a challenge.

Maybe your dreaming is a longing for novelty that will satisfy your hungry curiosity?

You could choose one of those fields that interests you and then learn some aspects of it?

Or write some software for it? Or some simulations of it, that sort of thing

Why don’t you study something in your spare time? There are plenty of grad students who moonlight as tutors that you could pay for a couple of hours a week to keep you on track.

Either:

1. Honor this urge that keeps arising. 2. Make those your hobbies and keep your current job to fund them.

As a hobby try building your own car.