I feel like I am in a job malaise

[midnight armadillo]

I work for a small science company that mostly does DoD/fed agency work. All non-weapon R&D type stuff. I have been here almost 3 years since finishing my physics PhD.

I feel like my enthusiasm for the work is fading. While I can apply many of my skills and am learning a lot from the other scientists, I am thinking that I really want to be working in biomedical related things, which is much closer to my thesis work and is orthogonal (i.e. completely different) from what I am doing now.

I also tend to get asked to do too much programming and too little science, since my programming skills are excellent and well, many people at the company are pretty mediocre programmers. Hm, maybe I missed my calling in bioinformatics.

Besides that, I really like the people, the pay is good, the place is family-friendly, and the commute is short. BUt damn, my motivation is low and I don't see it improving soon. Part of it I think is the heavy DoD connection - I had sworn off such work after spending part of college working for a large defense co. (again, non-weapon work, I have my standards :)) and hadn't really planned on doing it again. I understand that such is life for many small tech companies, but this place has no ambitions to do any other work.

Complicating things are the fact that I'm the lone wage earner for the wife and two little boys.

So what to do? Stick it out for a while longer? Try to move into bioinformatics? Or a biomedical device type company? Anyone been in a similar situation - no real reason to leave, not real happy?