For older people, do you ever find what you are looking for, at least at a reasonable price?
I was once the way of OP but then decided that fixing that would involve mostly eliminating other people (and I am highly risk averse, so doing my own thing is not acceptable to me) and I decided that was not feasible.
So I embraced apathy and am now the time killing bureaucrat calling meetings about status codes that both OP and the old me used to hate and apathy and indifference seem comfortable enough.
As I got older I cared less about dramatically changing the world, in the day job at least. It became a way to pay the bills and provide for my family.
I can live with that and it no longer bothers me the same way it did when I burned with the need to prove myself and do something awesome.
I'm still a creative person, I invent algorithms and play guitar and write software I care about. The job pays the bills.
Who is better off: (1) A MAMAA employee who approaches their job with religious-like zeal, pouring their heart and soul into extended workweeks to feed the gaping maw of Big Tech, or (2) a 9-5 software engineer working at a company nobody's heard of, on projects they don't personally care about, leaving actual time, energy, and creativity for people, projects, and other things that they do care about?
The government wants a world with mindless drones doing BS jobs.
If you want to combat that, you need to do your own thing, deliver value to your peers, inspire them to join you and create a bottom up economy filled with small businesses and not a socialist dystopia run by the government and their friends who own 99% of the "market"
I was once the way of OP but then decided that fixing that would involve mostly eliminating other people (and I am highly risk averse, so doing my own thing is not acceptable to me) and I decided that was not feasible.
So I embraced apathy and am now the time killing bureaucrat calling meetings about status codes that both OP and the old me used to hate and apathy and indifference seem comfortable enough.