i sort of accidentally did it after being burnt out from ~6 years in IT, mostly helpdesking/repair/network integration/sysadmin. i lost my shit and did scut work on farms for some years, then went to school for ag, yadda yadda yadda. the tech skills never really go away, because in my new line it would always get around that i could fix tech shit, recommend solutions, and muddle my way through learning new/confusing technologies being adopted. it gave me a foot in the door everywhere, because every org has tech debt. especially non profits, but they can rarely afford a full-time IT person who only does that. everybody doing weird shit needs multidiscipline flex players, not specialists.

the last two times i have felt “stuck” by an employer being unreasonable, within 6 months of starting a job search i get an offer from a place i want to work and they treat me like a warlock who has blended two oppositional schools of magic.

as a mostly monolingual anglo dumbass, i imagine its how truly multilingual codeswitchers feel in a dysfunctional border region or some colonial diaspora.zone.