How do I feel about mastering drone flying when the job is being automated?

You can fly any mission with precision, right as the industry starts flying itself. There is a strange grief in mastering something just as machines learn to do it. You are not wrong to feel it. The skill is real, and watching it get automated stings. But look at where the value is moving. As the flying gets automated, judgment does not, knowing which mission to fly, reading a situation, deciding when a machine should not be trusted. Your years in the air gave you exactly that judgment. The stick skills were never the whole of what you know. Move toward the work automation cannot touch: oversight, complex decisions, the missions that need a human who has actually been there. Your mastery is not obsolete. It is the foundation for the role that comes next, if you let it carry you there.