I left a relatively high paying corporate job about five years ago and took a ~50% pay cut to run a non-profit. I was feeling so burned out in my corporate job, going to work every day to do work that just didn't make my heart sing, helping the rich get richer. The non-profit was in a completely different field and that felt amazing, to be doing work that really makes a difference in the world. It felt like coming home and I had found my peeps.
And...running a non-profit is incredibly stressful. Your work is never done. In my corporate job, that was true, too, but there were so many more resources, and I could tell myself that they'd gotten their money's worth out of me and draw the line there. But in the non-profit, because I cared so deeply about the mission, I wanted to do more and more and more. And, as an executive director, a lot of what you're doing parallels corporate work--strategic planning, board management, fundraising. So, while I found the work very meaningful, I also found it stressful. It was a very hard decision, but ultimately after three years I decided I didn't want to run an organization, I wanted to do "front-line" work.
In this line of work, front line work requires retraining, so I went back to school and am working on a doctorate. I will be 52 when I graduate. My career trajectory has clearly not been fueled by smart financial decisions over the past five years, because after being out of the labor market for 5 years to get this doctorate, and spending 100K on it, I will make less money even than I made running the non-profit. But I made the decision five years ago that my career, and my life, was not about the money and that it never would be again.
And I couldn't be happier. That is true despite the fact that doctoral programs sometimes feel like one long hazing designed to break you. Despite that, I still love it.