For the last two years, I've basically been in an ever increasing spiral of depression over the fact that I hated my job and had grown to hate the menial work of programming that pretty much consists of 80% of all work. I jumped around on projects and new jobs trying to deny it, to find some kind of secret sauce that would fix it all ("Maybe I just need a different environment, maybe I need to get away from this shitty code base."), and it only served to make me want to wall myself in my room and never come out again.

So I quit. I'm going to quit programming for a living. I haven't had any fun programming in the last 3 years because I've been too caught up with programming for work that when I get home I'm spent. I might end up flipping burgers, or I might end up a freelance photographer, or something. I don't really know right now. But I'll be damned if I write another God damned bug ticket or estimate another iteration or deal with another pedantic asshat who won't shut up about the differences between classes and objects, even though I know what they are and just misspoke that one time, "would you please shut up, I'm trying to actually get to a point here".

I've got my rent covered for the next 3 months, I've got a friend willing to put me up after that, of the stuff I have I can probably sell a lot of it because I don't actually use it that much, and there are plenty of ways to make some spare cash on the side. We'll see what happens.

I hear burger engineers make good money.

Good move.
May I ask how old are you?
Is there any profession you'd like to/be able to learn? Dunno, carpentry, forestry. I think this moment will come in my life too, and I'm actually thinking about these. Or anything that's closer to the nature.

Well take a week and then start a project. I've been full-time programming for a year and I had to take a couple breaks before I could now fully invest my spare time into a planned out project.

Fair enough, you're sick of programming. But do you actually have anything you do want to do?

Programming might suck for you for the reasons you mentioned, but what makes you think that any other job is going to be any better?

My point is that you will still need to pay bills, etc. If you're willing to reduce your standard of living (i.e. take a pay cut) why not just work part time as a programmer and then at least you'll have more free tie to do the things you're actually interested in.

Good luck in whatever it is you decide to do either way!

I actually have a fair bit of experience with event coordinating through my volunteer work. I have a lot of contacts in the academic fund raising world, so as a last resort I can always hit them up (would probably require moving to Portland, OR). I really want to use this time to put together loan proposals for a couple of business plans that I've had on the back burner for the last three years. One particular one I could get a lot of my friends involved in in very productive capacities running a commercial beer brewery. I've got a couple of avenues for small income streams through graphic design, photography, and other fine arts, so I'm going to start spazzing out on Etsy or one of those sites like that. If I could bandy together a cool 1/4 mil, a friend of mine wants to sell me his bar.

As for what I *want* to do, there is no one thing. That's kind of the problem. I spend a lot of time needling down on one thing until I figure out how it works and then I abandon it. I've got to figure out a way to leverage that, and I think serial entrepreneur (start a company, sell it 5 years later, repeat) might be the way.

I tried quite many things too. I got totally into something, maybe for years, then simply got bored of it. I guess programming is one of those, just like music or modelling and maybe engineering will be the same. Unfortunately, it's not so easy just to "try things out", I can only get into things if I'm totally into them anyway...