Some dreams take a detour through a warehouse. That’s not off the path. That’s the funding.

Work that has nothing to do with your aim can still be entirely in service of it. Night shifts, warehouses, kitchens and call centres have funded an enormous number of things people later became known for, and treating those months as time off the path makes them heavier than they need to be. The job is not the compromise, it is the mechanism. Money has to come from somewhere.

If you are in a job you did not want, give it a job to do. Decide exactly what it is paying for and write that number somewhere you will see it.