You know, I just can't break this (career) wheel...

Find interesting technical work, try to blend in and not get noticed, get noticed, get slowly moved away from technical work and into "thought leadership" roles, realize what happened and try to find my way back into interesting technical work, repeat.

I'm a terrible mentor, I'm regularly paralyzed by imposter syndrome, I have no desire to return to management, I just want to try to break stuff and write about it while being invisible...