[thrwwXZTYE]

I always wanted to program games. I programmed games as a hobby. When I graduated university there were no gamedev jobs in my region, so I went to work at Boring B2B java company.

After a while I moved to a bigger city and I started having friends who work in gamedev. They told me about crunch, bad salaries etc. I decided to keep doing Boring B2B stuff. But I went to a few job interviews in gamedev companies.

Every time the questions on the interviews were FUN. Like doing 3d math, some low level C, writing a collision detection function or simple pathfinding.

Just solving these problems made me giddy.

Maybe it's the nostalgia for the time I've learned these things as a teenager with no stress, or maybe it's just that it's something completely different to what I'm doing normally - but I felt great during these interviews.

But I'd have to get a huge salary cut and abandon work-life balance and I'm too old for this.

TL;DR: I think there's a lot of value actually looking at day-to-day problems you need to solve in your dream job, even if you decide it's not for you for different reasons.

[megaloblasto]

I think your story is about a person who wouldn't take their dream job because they want more money and don't want to change.

[brookst]

Or perhaps someone who has learned that there is more to life than their job, and is making a prioritization decision accordingly.