Passion is overrated. I've done passion. Passion doesn't care about you. Sometimes the 'fire in the belly' is heartburn. You do realize there are commercial de

Passion is overrated. I've done passion. Passion doesn't care about you. Sometimes the 'fire in the belly' is heartburn. You do realize there are commercial developer positions where algorithms development is important, yes? You don't need to return to the same job you left. And even inside of academic research programs, there are research programmers. This is part of the support staff, and not in charge of securing grants; though they may help with writing the grants. Is there a graduate student adviser you can talk with about post-graduation career plans?