The real world is absolutely miserable, it's where passion goes to die.
Harsh dude. Are there not opportunities in your field though that are more challenging and creatively fulfilling? I've seen other posts where you described your current place of employment and a change might do you some good
I've noticed that to get to the "fun" work in a particular field, you first have to suffer through years of entry level crap like clear mentioned. You're doing routine work that isn't fun, but merely dictated and you are working with other people who are unmotivated and unwilling to learn.
Once you rise the ranks long enough either through promotion or vertical advancement by job hopping, you are usually given more flexibility in projects you want to work on and how you do them. The downside to that is that those promotions typically also involve other aspects of the job you probably don't want (i.e. budgeting, HR, compliance and reporting). So you are doing the parts of the job you always wanted to do, but now you are working 60+ hour weeks to get everything else done that comes with it.
To make matters worse, in an effort to cut costs, companies continue to consolidate positions, so you are either stuck as a specialist doing one task repeatedly with no deviation, or a generalist where are you are doing 3-4 jobs in one for the pay of just 1 job. It's pretty rough.
Entry and mid level positions are often dull and repetitive. Gotta keep learning, job hopping, and climbing upward. I'm in my 9th year of IT and I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the awful job tunnel. Current job gives me 25% of the workload my previous jobs have given me, pays me 30% more, and lets me come and go from the office as I please. Work is much less soul crushing when you know you're not forced to be at your desk for a set amount of time.
I'm not quite at your level yet, but yeah, since my recent promotion my job is much more tolerable. I'm in and out a lot and pretty much set my own office hours. I supervise two people who hold the same type of job I held just a year ago and I can definitely see the difference in flexibility.
I've only been here a few months so I'm still testing out what I can and cannot do, but so far I've been enjoying the freedom a lot more. Upper management has already expressed an interest in promoting me from within once a position opens up in their area. ---
Congratulations! Your post was deemed response-worthy.