downvotes are bound to ensue...

Gee - ya think? Sometimes I wonder why people are even here.

Somehow I find plenty of enterprise work to do with companies who are serious about having it done - and they let me do it in this "dying language" called Perl.

All I can say is wow - learn a little patience. People aren't writing Perl6 so that the Perl community can be on the top of some chart. It is being written to make it possible to get even more done with a beautiful language. Whether or not the media or academia likes it is irrelevant to me (not that my opinion matters - but I think that it might to somebody).