My mum was a librarian for 20 years. Benefits include:

Getting to read all the books before anyone else. Nobody complains if you are reading at work. No library fines for overdue books and no limit on how many books you can take out. Quiet work environment.

I actually did an internship at the library - wonder how I manage to organise that - there is a large amount of repetitive manual labour involved as I recall it, mostly handled by the junior staff

Does anyone else feel ill when seeing some AI images? It’s like an out of tune piano for me

I dropped out of the IT game before I even started (dropped out of an IT qualification 20yrs ago), and can honestly say it was totally worth it.

Now I spend some happy evenings working on IT side projects related to my main career (entertainment) and it’s fun. I even make extra cash doing freelance programming but because it’s not my main hustle I get to choose to say no.

What I’m saying is while you are at the hardware doing what you enjoy, there is nothing stopping you from doing freelance IT work on the side, just look for the projects that inspire you. It’s not all or nothing decision…