What helped me a lot with balancing financial security and passion was a switch in perspective. I can also relate to excitement about new job wearing off once “the dust settles”, but I started to see that doing what I always did (putting myself in professionally challenging situations with steep learning curves), will give me what it always did (all my time, energy and attention went into ‘adapting’ to the new context). Towards the end of last year I realized I want “me” to be defined by more than just my professional life so for 2021 I set a goal for myself to create more resources (time, energy, attention etc.) for non-professional activities. I got myself a job I like doing, where I’m still learning, but a muuuuuuuuuch slower pace, and that provides me sufficient financial security to live a comfortable life. It’s not the job of my life or what I could see myself doing forever. But it also doesn’t demand a lot from me to do it well so at the end of the day I have enough resources to focus on developing new skills and expanding the definition of who I am (which, at least for now, is for me as writing is for you).