I'm OK physically, not Homer Simpson or Mr. Six Pack. I walk all the time, play with my kids outside, but a purely physical job doesn't seem like the right thing for me. Unless I lost my job and had to take on a less-than-desirable physical job to make ends meet, I doubt I will ever leave IT.

I like IT work, I love being in the command line building servers, instances, writing shell scripts. Quite a few of my friends have moved up into management and to a man, I think they are miserable--what with dealing with multiple personalities every day, plotting peoples' time off, ensuring on-call coverage, living in meetings. I fancy none of that.

My fear is that within a couple of years I'll be 50 and still a sysadmin. Now, having said this, I don't find the work belittling or "less than". My wife, thankfully, is in full support of whatever I undertake as long as I do my bit to provide financially to the household. She has encouraged me more than once to strike out on my own and do my own thing. Like most people, I'm terrified to fail, so I sit and do nothing, wondering why the status quo sucks.