From 2012-2018 I worked a corporate job that I really loved, getting several promotions and increasing my compensation significantly. Worked a lot of hours bc I enjoyed the work so much but still what I considered reasonable, and I promoted healthy work life balance for all my teams. I had 3 young kids at home and was still able to do what I thought was my fair share of housework and raising the kids. Then I went through a divorce, 2 six-month stints at startups that were a mess, unemployed for another 6 months while volunteering for a political campaign then another 6 months of 80 hour weeks working for that campaign. when the campaign ended I was ready to find the next stage of my career, but covid had just arrived in the US and I had to scramble to find a job bc I was basically broke from earning 1/5 of my typical salary over the previous year. I ended up taking a job running DevOps for a small SaaS business. not really what I had in mind and the comp was decent but still a good 30% less than what I had been making previously. but the expectations were low, I got great reviews and made important impact in the areas that they needed from me. Probably only required 10-20 hours/week, and I didn't mind coasting, and my kids were growing up fast and I liked the flexibility to prioritize them over career. This week I'll have been coasting here for 1000 days. But recently I've been itching to get back into the kind of job I had before, where I could really sink my teeth into interesting problems, nurture high performing teams and build great products. I do wonder if I can find that environment again, or will everywhere I look be filled with people who have also gotten used to coasting and not really striving for excellence.