I became a software engineer because I enjoyed programming as a hobby and I was good at it. That was twenty years ago. Now I'm still doing it because of the pay and not much else.
This isn't me saying your way is wrong and my way is right, just offering a different approach to job search.
Thinking about work in terms of objective drudgery that one doesn't mind doing (or even better, that one enjoys doing) is one way to avoid the mental dichotomy of drudgery-vs-reward since then the work itself is either its own reward, or it just doesn't tip the scales negatively, philosophically speaking. In a way, it's a form of taking pleasure in small things, like feeling accomplished after cleaning the kitchen even though cleaning a kitchen is almost universally considered drudgery.
A woodworker has a new cabinet or something at the end of the day. It's a real thing that is useful in the world and even if you stopped enjoying woodworking you at least see real tangible results from your work. This is much harder to get from IT/software dev. That's why I try to focus on whether my work makes someone else's drudgery less awful. It gives me the feeling that I did a real thing that accomplished something (however small) in the world.
This also happened in other romance languages.