I am 26. Quit my job almost 1 year ago after 2 years of soul-crushing, passionless web development.<p>After 6 months off the job, now I&#x27;m trying to figure it out as a web freelancer. Not making anywhere near my old salary but I&#x27;m optimistic.<p>I&#x27;m enjoying it more for now, but it&#x27;s tough. I&#x27;m broke. Blew through my meager savings in the first 6 months of unemployment, and I&#x27;m now dealing with back-to-back underestimated contracts. But I&#x27;m taking out a small loan and gonna be optimistic about it. I mean, worst case scenario I end up back in another soul-crushing job making mad stacks.<p>In the meanwhile, since starting the freelancing journey, a couple other promising opportunities have come up. A couple friends of mine started a company selling a plugin for a popular online platform and are looking for someone to handle their support line part-time (help people when they can&#x27;t install his software, fix bugs that they uncover, and help building small features that customers request).<p>Programming just full time might actually be a good solution. I can handle a 3 day&#x2F;week commitment, it&#x27;ll pay enough for now and give me opportunities to do something outside of programming for a change.<p>My other option right now centers around a couple friends who are similarly dissatisfied with the life of a corporate programmer and who are seriously considering &quot;doing a startup&quot;.<p>We&#x27;re not American, but flights are cheap. The money seems so loose over there, and if we can manage to convince some investors to give us an even half-decent salary (hell, I&#x27;ll happily work for half of what an engineer gets in Silicon Valley) it could be a great time.<p>I&#x27;m fortunate to have some amazing friends who are willing to go on this journey as a team. No way I&#x27;d ever have the stamina to do it alone.<p>All this to say is that there are a handful of ways to make a living as a programmer without losing your sanity, but you&#x27;ll have to really keep your eyes open and ears to the ground to find them.