Send your workplace conundrums to workologist@nytimes.com, including your name and contact information (even if you want it withheld). The Workologist is a guy with well-intentioned opinions, not a professional career adviser. Letters may be edited.

I’m a 55-year-old male. I recently sold my business, which was very profitable. Financially, I am pretty well set. But while the idea of an early retirement was always appealing, I’m finding that I am bored out of my mind. I miss the activity and satisfaction that came from building and running a company. I don’t feel I can talk to any of my friends about this, as they are hard at work and can’t really identify with my boredom. I feel I am too old to go back into the work force, which seems so focused on millennials. Moreover, I have enjoyed 25-plus years plus of calling my own shots, so I wonder about reporting to someone else. Is this just something I need to get over and enjoy the fruits of my labor? Or should I try to re-enter the work force in some limited capacity? ASHEVILLE, N.C.

Congratulations on submitting the most enviable “workplace dilemma” that I can recall. And as if the rest of us weren’t jealous enough already, you likely have better options than you realize. No need to head back to some mailroom to be bossed around by twentysomethings 40 hours a week. You can dabble — consulting, taking on short-term gigs, freelancing.

“We’re seeing a massive number of people who, after retirement, come back to the work force by freelancing,” according to Stephane Kasriel, chief executive of Upwork, a site that freelancers use to connect with clients in a range of fields. Upwork and the Freelancers Union commission an annual study on this segment of the work force and found that in the United States 16 million people age 55 and up did freelance work in 2017.

To be sure, plenty are doing so because they need to: Maybe they were thrown out of work against their will, or discovered retirement is more expensive than anticipated. But some, Mr. Kasriel observes, simply found full-time leisure unsatisfying.

There are a couple of paths you might follow. You could look for freelance gigs that leverage your specific skills (related to whatever field you worked in), but on a temporary or project basis. Or, Mr. Kasriel says, you could hire yourself out as more of a coach, offering “the wisdom acquired” from building a business. “People that have been 20 or 30 years in the work force have a lot of transferable experience,” he adds.