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Whoa, this hits close to home:

the great many members of the educated middle class are only too susceptible to a modern version of the affliction known to the Middle Ages as accidie: the emotional malaise and subacute despair that was the typical disease of the clerc who realized, around age thirty or so, that he would be neither saint nor abbot.

Similarly, knowledge workers who, while successful, remain within a specific function or specific discipline until around forty-five or so, often become tired, dispirited, and bored with themselves and the job. . . .

The accomplished knowledge journeyman, at forty-five or fifty is in his physical and mental prime. If he is tired and bored, it is because he has reached the limit of contribution and growth in his first career--and he knows it. he is likely to deteriorate rapidly if left doing what no longer truly challenges him. It is of little use to look to "hobbies" or to "cultural interests" to keep him alive. Being an amateur does not satisfy a man who has learned to be a professional....To be a dilettante has to be learned in childhood as all aristocraties have known.

Photon Courier quoting Peter Drucker.