That's kind of what happened to me. At first it was great, pay was not too bad, I was teaching myself new things, it was really pretty good. Then a decade later, it's just work to why am I even doing this.

I think the last three years I've been working solo, had a co-worker briefly but he needed something more consistent.

So from going back 6 years ago, having three co-workers and going to just me by myself, it started to feel like solitary confinement and I slowly started to hate it. The base pay didn't change; I've been not paid and ripped off too many times, customers suck but at least I shut down a few businesses that way. Then came the complaints about, I would charge $150 for a trip charge and $100 an hour after that. Which is actually reasonable because of all the work before hand, billing, ordering parts, driving, vehicle wear and fuel (I'd have to charge $250 for a trip now because of the all the expenses), tools, etc. And well the decade of experience. Not to mention fixing shit in a restaurant is a crappy work environment and the restaurant owners are the most annoying, entitled, cry babies. So I stopped doing service calls. And just did the $30 an hour, 1099, at the shop for whoever wants to bring their stuff in to get fixed.

I liked the work that I did but not the rest of it and the constant nagging from my ex-friend/boss (learned why you don't work with friends). It's like the whole business was set up around me and it just felt worse and worse. So yeah I recently quit and I'm hoping to get a job at a pet store while being a career college student. It makes me happy that there was maybe 10K of lost sales. A family member died, I got sick from the lettuce fun, and then I was told I'm a lazy drunk, get out of bed and go to work, and the kicker "was she really that important to you." So I just said fuck it, I'm done.

When I worked in retail, it wasn't bad. I was surrounded by pretty girls... some of which I dated, and well some that I had to smack away with a fly swatter. They let me do whatever I wanted there so it was good, got a 50% raise in a year and a position created just for me that paid as much as a supervisor. Interacted with all sorts of people, it was nice. I'll tell you, I have to get reacquainted with society. The last three-four years of only seeing an average of two people a day messed me up. I struggle going to the grocery store for longer than ten minutes.

Sorry for the long rant, but I just figured I'd share that I get what you mean.