I think anything you do for a lifetime has a very good chance of becoming "ho hum." After 25 years in the field, I am starting to feel that way more and more about software development. You see the same ideas come up over and over. The same wheels reinvented over and over, but differently enough that you have to take one step back to take two steps forward. I wonder if it's really possible to for most of us to reach age 65, and if we've spent that time in one field or line of work to not feel some regrets about what we might have done. It might well be that these "deathbed confessions of things I wish I had done differently" are largely unavoidable.
You pluck the low-hanging fruit early in your career.
This doesn't mean there isn't scope for new thinking and originality; it just means that it's much harder to do something original, and it will take you longer and make you sweat more.
The real mind-death is a job which delivers no challenges and consists of endless repetition.
