Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.

Steep ground is not climbed straight up, and the switchback is not a detour from the climb but the shape the climb takes. Progress that looks sideways from a distance is often the only kind that holds weight. People give up less because the summit is far away than because the route stopped seeming to point at it.

When your current work feels tangential to what you actually want, check whether it is building altitude anyway: skill, contacts, patience, money. If it is, the sideways feeling needs no correcting. If it genuinely is not, that is worth knowing before another year of walking.