Yeah, or that it is easier to identify the slog with the hindsight of middle age?

I'm not a Buddhist, but because of the stressors of my previous career I sometimes joke that I accidentally recreated the fundamental tenets of Buddhism in order to not wash out. One of the things I've come to realize is that the slog feeling you describe is something like the concept of 'samsara' or "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence" per the smarter people that edited the Wikipedia article. But that it's still possible to find meaning and satisfaction within this paradigm.