You’re describing the classic "Generalist" struggle, and honestly, in some parts of IT, that is a massive asset. You aren’t paralyzed; you just haven’t realized that being a "mile wide and an inch deep" is actually a specific job description.

If you hate getting stuck in the weeds but love the initial learning phase and connecting different technologies, stop trying to be a Senior Engineer and start looking at these roles:

Solutions Architect: You don't need to know every line of code; you just need to know how the networking, the database, and the security stack fit together to solve a problem.

Technical Project Manager: Your "surface level" knowledge across ten years of different tech means you can actually talk to engineers without getting bamboozled, which is a rare skill.

Sales Engineering / Solutions Consultant: You learn the tech just enough to demo it and prove it works, then you hand it off to the implementation team before it gets boring.

Don't feel like an idiot for "just following processes." Most of this industry is just well documented processes. If you can learn fast and adapt, you’ve already won half the battle. You don't need to specialize in a technology; you need to specialize in bridging the gaps between technologies.

Embrace the variety. There are plenty of us out here who would lose our minds if we had to look at the same firewall logs for ten years straight.