How do I cope with losing the work I love as I get senior?

You climbed high enough to earn respect, and somewhere along the way you looked up and realized you spend your days in meetings and slide decks instead of the craft that made you fall in love with this work in the first place. That is a real loss, and it is worth grieving, not brushing off. This is the quiet trade of seniority that no one warns you about. Your value shifted from doing the work to shaping it through others. That can feel hollow if the doing is what fed you. But your experience now protects a whole team's worth of that work. When you steer a decision well, you are still doing the craft, just at a bigger scale and one step removed. Still, do not let the part you love die completely. Carve out a small piece of real, hands-on work and defend it, even a few hours a week. You do not have to choose between leading and loving the craft. Keep a foot in both. The joy that brought you here is worth protecting on purpose.