It took me way too much time to realize that, whatever is to be done, career should be absolutely sacred. Please note that I'm choosing the word sacred as a language figure but without any exaggeration.
Sacred means 'set apart and worshiped like a god.' Treating your career like that is setting yourself up for massive disappointment. You should be working to live, not living to work.
Work is not career. Work is what happens at a given day of your career.
Also, if you enjoy your work enough, your description becomes unfair. You do not feel it like sacrificing life in order to pospone living.
Also, that suggest that there is some hedonistic way to live there that is also easily disappointing.
Humans needs challenges and responsibility to channel their energy. Who doesn't have it, manages to find it in the form of problems (or even psychopatologies).
Dominating the know how of some algorithm gives you a power that can be quite satisfying. Still, that is not career. The tasks at your work are things that happen at a given day of your career.
Career is a trajectory. A mission. Way way more than your current employment.