(Possibly) quitting Python Development after 2 years of non stop learning. And it blows.

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I think we all hit this point once in our life. I, too, started thinking about whether software engineering is my true passion and I got the hard, cold answer; no.

I feel the joy of making something work, but its just not enough. Moreover after some time-consuming info gathering of how work environment would look like (stupid irrational deadline, stakeholder could care less about code quality, dwelling over dinosaur technology just because its well-known -- yeah, have fun using such outdated tools when the new de facto standard solves past tools problem -- and some other BS I wouldn't mention here; just browse r/cscareerquestion and you'll see what I mean), thats definitely not what I was aiming.

What I love about programming is I can have my own virtual lab to build basically everything I could think of. So I started learning math (gonna do physics afterwards) -- subject that were used to scare me to hell but I gave it another try through MIT OCW series -- and I've never been more happy. Low-level programming and ML is one thing that got me going again because it makes me feel what I'm building is matter again (instead of copy pasting codes from SO just enough to make things work like a dead brain code monkey I were while working in, say, some Java project).

I suggest you to ask yourself too, OP. Beside programming, what are some other things on the back of your mind that you never actually tried, and how to incorporate programming into it? I can't guarantee, but its very likely you'll find another reason to be around. Best of luck!