I think that the world is constantly changing. Technology, medicine, science, social movements, etc. all contribute to an evolving (or devolving!) state of affairs. Why would you think you would be constant. Why would you think you wouldn't have to do any personal work if the world around you is changing. THOSE are precisely the people that I cannot stand. Those who took a position at thirty and are unwilling to look outside the careful little box. I don't think you need to say you aren't a writer anymore. You write a ton here. It might not be fiction, but you write. You just write different things. You write about politics and your joys and your frustrations, etc. I think you're worrying too much about the writer you were. Maybe you're becoming a different kind of writer. Maybe THIS kind of writing is more relevant to you now.

I think you're looking for something that is fixed. I can do this to perfection. My goals are met. How sterile. Why not just accept that it's all a learning process. That we can always take it up a notch or two. That once we become "experts" the joy of learning something new is done. That there is NO SHAME in learning a new task or making something better. I think the danger is to assume that you have a lock on something. Maybe someone is wrong but maybe they are right. You need to listen and based on your experience move forward. If you make a mistake, okay, no harm no foul. You've learned something. If this person is proven wrong, then you know that they can be wrong and file that away.

I get the sense that you're looking for terra firma and I don't think is terra firma. If there was, life would be pretty damn boring.

How do they handle it? We grit out teeth a lot. That's why I started writing. Because I was staggering under an avalanche of minutia, and if I didn't start doing something for me that was an expression of just me, I think I would have crawled into a mental hole and not come out.