Getting aged out of CC

What to do?

I find after years of faithful service to the Mac and Adobe overlords both my Mac and I are getting aged out. The reality is I am about one year from "retirement" as a full time book designer. My practice is equally concentrated between print and ebooks. So staying up to date has been more or less essential—depending on how well the tools actually worked in real world application—i.e. with the dominance of Amazon on bookselling. At best, the epubs look super great and function well in iBooks (where they don't sell), and at worst they look crappy on Kindle (even with tweaking the code) and don't function near as well where they do sell. But that's another story. The point is to continue being competitive I need to use the latest and greatest. BUT ...

My souped-up late 2012 iMac can't run High Sierra (10.13) at all, and it's very iffy on an update to Sierra (10.12). As I anticipate going on SS next year and my workload is gradually slowing, buying a new Mac (or even a new more powerful PC with all the new software I'd have to buy—plus not knowing how to troubleshoot an unfamiliar OS) seem very unlikely. I thought, "Well that's OK. I can limp along on CC 2017 for quite a while." Except I really can't and expect that my epub (to mobi) files will be the best they can be and still retain any hairs on my head, or any clients.

After retirement I could maybe afford a new computer if I could also put Adobe CC on an intermittent or occasional use license. But I can't buy a new computer AND continue to pay $52.99 per month (in addition to every other subscription software plan out there, etc. etc.). That's the lowest cost plan Adobe offers for InDesign. (Why is there one for just Photoshop but not for just InDesign?) I've asked Adobe for an occasional use license, but they don't care. It's pay every month for a year's contract or nothing. I would gladly pay a little more per month if I could do it for a limited time say a month here or there.

Also, even if I could use CS6 efficiently to do the same level of work, I can't do so on my current set up (El Capitan) and it won't run in a new OS at all either. So no rewards for being a user since Pagemaker 1.0. Old dogs are unneeded. Thank for getting us to be a multi-billion dollar megacorp, now go away.

So what to do? Do I bite the bullet, buy a new Mac, and just eat ramen, and arthritis pills? 

Youngsters, don't feel too smug. This will eventually happen to you too. (I rue the days when I used to scoff to the oldsters in the office complaining about their technical pens clogging. The struggle was real.)