I enjoy writing Python. Javascript isn't that thrilling to me. Not super excited by the countless FooJS libraries and Promises and async everything. In Protractor if I want to get the text of an element in the DOM, that's a promise. I mean come on? .getText() should not return a promise. I'm not a Javascript expert, so this will sound whiney-ish, but I think Promise hell is a thing just like Callback hell is.
Perhaps you could aim for something similar. There's employers out there (eg. RedHat) that will happily pay you to hack on open source if you can show that it's in both of your best interests. That way you get to choose what you're working on going in. Even just specialising a bit more might make things more interesting as you'll be hired to work on <thing you actually quite like> instead of some random stack put together by someone who may not have a clue.
Good luck in your search :)
Also, if you want something challenging, but not quite C, maybe give Rust a chance. I hear lots of companies with fun stuff are using it.
I've found my enjoyment in taking such companies and teaching them how to produce quality code without compromising on speed. I've found my enjoyment in encouraging such companies to take on young coders who i can then teach, and see flower into excellence they could otherwise only reach with years of investment.
And occasionally there is the one or two projects that are just for fun, or really touch many many customers.
Don't give up and blame the world. Look harder. Maybe even change your language. I mainly do Perl, which gets a bit of a bad rap by people who don't use it. But compared to companies doing e.g. Java or PHP i find a marked difference in culture. Maybe you're just stuck with the wrong focus in your skill set?
Or, if you feel brave: Maybe your problem is that you keep getting into the kind of company that wants an employee. Maybe you can change your situation by becoming a freelancer. Keep in mind that as a freelancer, you eventually, if you're good enough, end up in the position where you may fire clients. You also tend to see a lot more projects of much more variety.