42, former entrepreneur and beverage professional - any options for a change?

Findapath-Career Change

I posted this a few days ago on another sub and got some good feedback. Hoping to get a bit more advice here and maybe figure something out.

I’m looking for suggestions and ideas as to where I can go from here. Either with current qualifications or some level of retooling.

I’m in the eastern US. I went to a good university and had no idea what I wanted to do, no drive and basically just got a humanities degree. I’m a gregarious introvert who highly values small-scale connections and conversations. After graduation, I worked various jobs ranging from car sales to editing web sites and liquor store clerking. Of course, 2008 hit and taught my now wife and I to live quite frugally.

I took an interest in beer, wine and spirits and pursued education in these things while just working away in my 20s and saving what money we could. I did the cicerone and sommelier certifications and a couple others, but my real plan had been to move to wine country and become a winemaker. I invested into the distance education program for winemaking and viticulture at UC Davis but due to some developments in our family, we stayed put.

Long story long, I opened a small retail shop and wine bar which I loved but burnt me out. I sold that business and have since had roles as a store wine director, an assistant brewer and an assistant winemaker (this was 4 hours away from my home and didn’t pan out due to having to rent an apartment that basically ate my salary). Most recently, I developed and launched another upscale wine store with some partners (thinking partners would help stave off the burnout) but wound up selling my share to them because friends don’t always work well as business partners. Lesson learned.

So here we are and that’s the majority of my professional experience. I’m trying to figure out what is next. My wife has a good job, and we’ve paid off our home and have low debt. I don’t need to make a fortune, so my focus is on quality of life and fulfillment. To that, I don’t want to do the nights and weekends lifestyle as a sommelier, and the idea of leading wine tastings makes me want to hide in a cave. I have a young child and want to be both physically and emotionally/mentally available to her. Another retail foray is probably not the right call, so I’m slowly starting to accept that my beverage lane may be played out for me. I specialized in something that pretty much centers around evening and weekend work.

However, I learn things very quickly and am generally good with my hands. I’d love to learn a new skill and am open to a variety of ideas for a job that interests me in the long term. At 42, I probably can’t physically keep up with a lot of the trade apprenticeship tasks. I love creating, brainstorming, troubleshooting, etc., and I tend to get bored doing monotonous tasks. If anyone stayed with me through this long background, do you have suggestions for jobs or paths that might be a good fit? Or have I fully painted myself into a corner due to geographic limitations?

Posted Sep 11, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

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