Ask HN: Why did you leave your “primary” career?

The recent submission of the postal service LLV mentioned a lawyer who became a letter carrier. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18795323

If you've left your "primary" career, be that software or legal or whatever, what can you say about that?

I'll go.

I have a BSCS, 1988. I mostly liked software development for most of the time since. But, I was never more than a B player. I suspected that early, but never admitted it to myself. This, combined with lifelong depression, made for a more and more miserable life.

I left software development for a few years, for personal life issues. I came back sideways, in quality assurance. I liked that well enough.

Finally got my depression diagnosed and successfully treated. But I also have anger issues, may or may not be correlated with depression; no matter.

I rage-quit my last QA job due to a conflict (for which I share only partial blame, but full blame for the sudden resignation), only to find that I was now too old and irrelevant to "walk across the street" and get hired.

Had to take a security guard job for survival. Came into contact with a lot of semi truck drivers, as most shippers' checkin/checkout is done by third party security services (no responsibility for those people, so cheaper). I also spent a lot of time walking around and in buildings under construction. No meaningful benefits, which is difficult at my age.

I slowly realized that I could do what those drivers were doing.

In the nineties and early oughts, it was extremely easy to get a software job, even for B players. That is the case for semi drivers, now and into the future.

For me it's an ideal job. My son's grown, I have no SO, and while I like people, I also like isolation; it's emotionally quiet. The pay is nowhere near software wages, but it's more than enough to get by, with meaningful benefits.

And I haven't had a single meeting in the year I've been driving.

EDIT: Subject line.