Great post; thx! I can relate. For almost 30 years since college, I've tried to generate my own signal rather than working on someone else's noise--which can be a feast or famine sort of strategy, but I have never hated my job, quite the opposite, actually. (And I walk, daily, to a coffee shop down the street as part of the commute to my home office.) I've changed focus less frequently than every three years, but whenever the signal to noise ratio dropped, the changes were big.