> I would like to be ready to offer interesting solutions or services in niches where most people don't think of working.

This is a really good point; I was actually coming from the perspective of knowing where to look to find a[n existing] predictable work environment, but standing alone (or with a small group) and offering a stable service might be an even better balance, thanks to the more malleable culture. Hmm...

> Health care is one place with potential though it may only fit some of your criteria.

If I can avoid the corruption (sadly inevitable, with the boggling financial scales involved) and I was in a clearly politically defined environment that might work.

> It was pretty cool to make a 7 figure difference with a little SQL and TCL for a local clinic where I worked as a DBA.

Wow, cool. High-impact limited-radius work sounds like a lot of fun :D

> Lots of opportunities to make people's day to day lives easier, too.

Yeah :D especially in the UI/UX area: https://medium.com/tragic-design/how-bad-ux-killed-jenny-ef9... https://medium.com/swlh/designers-healthcare-needs-you-stat-... (even just https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amedium.com+healthcare...)

> No need for the latest language either.

Which is great - if I'm not required to hold on and keep up, I can learn stuff on the side at a comfortable pace, and onboard useful tech in situations where it would really count, when I have enough competence to architect with it well. (That's my main fear with a mainstream job - being expected to continuously sign off on designs I don't fully grok.)

> Instead of learning the latest popular language, what I've decided to do is start learning things that sound interesting.

We're all at a different place mentally, etc; you're completely right, following the pack to learn the latest language is inefficient. (And "I need to learn the latest language" sounds ridiculous on the surface!)

> I've almost finished Little Schemer, for example. I'm working through Coding the Matrix to get my math up to speed. The Machine Learning course on Coursera was inspiring. After Little Schemer the rest of the "Little" books, Starting Forth, SICP, and others, are on the agenda.

TIL about CtM and ML, I'll look into those! I've actually been looking at Forth myself; its philosophy (http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm) and operational model (http://toddbot.blogspot.be/2014/01/the-ide-called-forth-or-f...) are the most interesting I've yet found in a language. http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/forth.html is a fun, oddball anecdotal intro (and a site worth browsing as far as it will go - gems inside :P), and you may also be interested in http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net and https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako. (I have about ~20 more Forth bookmarks so far.)

> I'm also wondering if Life Sciences might have some interesting opportunities.

That might be interesting to explore. There was a thread on here recently that noted that developments are badly needed to help implement theoretical and research work, and while some of that would probably be quite fast-paced, something like this (depending on the work on a case-by-case basis, really) could be a pretty predictable work environment.