I have fantasies of specific jobs that are completely out of my industry (IT). They pay a lot less. Finding meaning in that is how I would pursue it if I had the cash.
It sounds like you took time off to find yourself but came up short with the long-term job plan, doing what you loved?
But just like in engineering, every path has its own set of trade-offs. And part of the pay trade-off is that while I can live comfortably on smaller pay, I can earn my financial independence WAYYY earlier on tech bucks, then suddenly pay becomes a non issue.
I came up short in finding something that felt worth my time/energy, even if it didn't pay.
Part of it is as the author suggests, that it can be hard to sustain a love for something that you're also trying to make economically viable. They are to some degree competing concerns (not everyone loves entrepreneurship).
But also there's value in something being scarce. Which is why in the first few months I was "working" 40h weeks on projects that I had only been giving 3-5h/week before.
But eventually having 100% of my own time became status quo, and that fire was gone.
https://reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/sm54ri/anyon...