TD,
Let's say - arguendo - Steve Wynn decided to build a companion course right next to Shadow Creek. Same dead-flat, lonely desert landscape, no natural features but cactus - and no sensitive environmental constraints beyond exhuming Bugsy Siegel's human soil amendments.
What stage of your career you want to tackle this blank slate? Speaking for myself, there is/was a sweet spot between finally accumulating enough experience - and that inevitable point where mental energy in the tank shows less than half full.
In other words, my creativity as a still photographer or writer remains at full power, but the requirements are short spurts of extreme concentration. After 6-8 hours moving lights and switching out glass on a motion set, I wear down physically and mentally - lacking the energy to solve problems nearly as effectively as, say, 10 years ago.
Writing a few columns and tackling a complicated book . . . . two different things.
Certainly I fall back on stylistic habits - instead of constantly trying to push the envelope out of whole cloth - but the accumulation of scar tissue and 40 years of road rash has to eventually truncate even a genius like you (not to swell your head like the rest of the Treehouse bromancers).
As Mike Wilbon loves to opine: "Father time is undefeated."
Maybe going back and drastically improving/fixing your past mistakes can be done at any age - using experience as a guidepost - but standing at the base of that mountain, confident you've got the gumption and and energy to conjure up something out of featureless whole cloth that stands up, well, to the standards you created . . . . . it always comes down to road weariness.
BTW, Nice to know the piss pond at RCD is gone, but hard to believe it was replaced by a Floridian splash bunker. Next time you're near the Mountains of Mourne, maybe make a suggestion to Group Captain Patrick O'Hearn (I just made that name up) . . . . . .