We technically reached financial independence. Now what?

I calculated today, my wife and I currently have enough money in investments, that on average we can pay for all of our expenses using investment money. (Note that this is an average. Sometimes we make more money. Sometimes we make less. It would be unwise to completely depend on investment money only.)

Both of us have high paying jobs.. all of this income is just going to add onto the investments, since we already cover all of our costs with the investment income.

I am having a “midlife crisis” about what my future job should be. I work as a software engineer. I have always been the smart computer kid in school, but over the decades, technology has been changing so much, it has been hard to keep up. I am wondering how long I will be able to keep this up before employers start just going for someone younger.

We have a family. Time with the kids is important. I am starting to look at my typical job, with 8 hours + 1 hour for lunch + 1 hour commute in each direction, that is 11 hours used for work, that I am wondering if I can reduce significantly.

I don’t really care about the pay too much.. But I am not ready to work for free. I just want to be productive, and mentally challenged at work, but then be able leave all of that and not deal with it when I come home.

I don’t like the idea of being a freelancer, because then I need to negotiate how much money I will be paid, which I don’t really care about. I’d prefer a project where I don’t have much responsibility to a deliver a project, and instead I would prefer to be an advisor or teacher.

At the same time, I recognize, we can now afford certain services that we previously have not done much because we felt it was too expensive. A few examples:

1. Having people clean our place. (Because it gets overwhelming with kids to keep it clean.)
2. Having prepared foods be delivered to us regularly. (Although we try cooking once in a while, it is not something we really enjoy doing. And we are concerned about our kids eating healthy.)
3. Going on more vacations.
4. Getting a nanny/babysitter supplimenting the daycare.
5. Donate more money.

Currently we continue to go the same path and accumulate wealth, and are starting to spend more on the things listed above, but as the wealth accumulates, I keep getting a stronger urge to change my job to something else.. but I don’t know to what.