Forgive me if this isn’t the right place for this question, but hopefully, someone else has been in my situation too. I’ve basically come to a point in my life where I’m feeling a bit burnt out and I don’t know the best path forward.

I work as a full-time software developer. I hate it. It’s stressful, I’m underpaid, and the company is behind the times. On the other hand, I also do stand-up comedy and I love it. I’ve only been at it for about a year and a half, but I’ve headlined a few times, opened for some recognizable acts, and had a few comedy pieces published online. I’m by no means a professional standup or writer, but I have a passion for comedy and I believe I’ve had a decent amount of success in the time I’ve been doing it. Of course, my dream is to land a job working in comedy, but I know that’s not something that happens overnight (or even ever necessarily).

But I do know that in order to have any chance of success in that space it’s going to require hard work and dedication. And I find that if I get on a regimen of scheduling time to write/perform after work, I stay motivated. Even though a career in comedy is a long shot, if I know I’m putting in the work, I can keep my hopes high.

However, after long stints of doing that, I eventually get burnt out and have to take time off. And that downtime is the point where the disillusionment sets in. My love of comedy never leaves, but I just find it hard to motivate myself to get back into that schedule of spending most of my free time after work devoted to comedy. It’s like as long as I’m busting my ass, I’m happy, but as soon as I have to take a break, I find it hard to get back. I recognize this isn’t sustainable long term. And this will be even more so the case in the future because my girlfriend and I are also planning to get married and start a family soon, so I'll have to find a way to stay balanced, yet motivated. 

I’ve thought about it long and hard, and as much as I love comedy, starting a family together with the love of my life is the most important thing to me. And if we started a family, I’d want to get a better-paying software engineering job to better support a family. Currently, I’m probably between 20 and 40k underpaid for my position and I know that getting a new software engineering would be a great help financially, but the kicker is I really just don’t enjoy software anymore. 

And even if I did decide to get a new development job, my company is so behind the times in terms of best practices/tech that I’m a bit fearful that I’m trapped with my current company and would feel lost elsewhere. I know that there are resources that I could use to catch up with the industry, but I fear that what I learn from those resources won’t necessarily translate to the real world, but then again that could just be my anxiety talking.

So to sum it all up I’m feeling burnt out and don’t know where to turn exactly. I’m not so delusional that I think comedy will pay the bills anytime soon for me, let alone a family. Part of me thinks the thing to do would just be to approach comedy as a hobby and just focus on catching up on software development. But I can't motivate my brain in "hobby mode". I just find myself thinking "Why am I working on this bit/piece? I'm not working at comedy enough to make anything of it." So the dream doesn't stay alive. I've always heard that if you're doing comedy for money then you're in it for the wrong reasons, and I agree. But to be clear, it's not the money that I need to stay motivated, so much as it is that I need to be able to put in enough effort to make myself believe that even the smallest career in comedy is attainable. On the bright side, another part of me thinks maybe if I do comedy as a hobby and devote more time to software, I'll find maybe it’s not so much that I hate software development that it is that I hate my current company. 

Another part of me thinks that I should pursue a different career altogether.  I only ever ended up in software development in the first place because I had the whole upbringing of “Go to college. Get a real degree and a real job. Blah blah blah.” The whole idea of pursuing something you love wasn’t even on my radar until the past few years, and I’m in my early 30s. I looked into freelance writing since I’d already had a few comedy pieces published. I figured a freelance job can allow me to work from home every day and make my own schedule to support time with family and for comedy. Of course, if I did something like that, I’d be starting from scratch, and almost certainly getting paid less than I do from my already underpaid job, which isn't really conducive to starting a family. 

So, I'm at sort of a crossroads where I know I want to start a family, but I'm a ball of anxiety in a sort of "paralysis of analysis" state trying to balance a family with all these other irons in the fire, and potential career changes. Does anyone have any life advice or resources that you can point me to for helping me get “un-stuck”? I’m sorry for the anxious stream of consciousness I’ve laid out before you. My only hope is that someone can relate to this and offer a word of advice that can help point me on the right course.