The flip side, which I think I am on the verge of experiencing, is that to sacrifice having the feeling of purpose and drive might end up costing you your health and/or family.

Never underestimate the toll that denying yourself can have on your health and relationships.

This illustrates that sacrifice prolonged has dangers, namely it dulls purpose, and gives you an excuse to choose a passive approach to life.

This type of sacrifice is different in the sense you're sacrificing for 'a better life' as opposed to sacrificing for 'your purpose' or the purpose of your family. And its very dangerous to sacrifice for 'a better life' per se, because we humans are never satisfied ;p

One technique is to have a set time set aside where you focus totally on, say, family. For me, it is Sundays at 3pm. I have a videoconference with my folks, and for that hour I am theirs, completely. The benefits to having a regular schedule increase the potency of the interaction, as it provides an anchor, rhythm and excuse.

As for your health, well, my grampa used to say "your health is your wealth". That is still a lesson I am trying to learn.

In my next bit I am suggesting that you do not need to sacrifice your "deeper needs" (to use your language) in order to have a meaningful family life. Further, I am suggesting that there are auxiliary benefits to the particular technique that I propose.

I'm trying to work my way out of a life of feeling dread every Sunday evening. Several solutions that look right for me: 1. start my own business 2. get back into a small company, possibly a small non-profit, and have lower pay but greater creative input 3. go into teaching 4. some combination of the above

I thought about going to graduate school and trying to get into academics. The thought of researching and teaching is appealing. However, I'm not encouraged by what I've read recently about the costs involved with it.

As an aside a colleague of mine is to the point of waking in cold sweats because he hates the job so much. I'm not that bad......yet.

I don't intend anything I say in regards to jobs or callings as advice, just as a data point. When I took the safe route 11 years ago, I never imagined what I was risking.

At this point, I regret not believing in myself and not having the courage to try - even if it meant failing - much earlier in my life. I settled for a sort of half-life, in which I am happy in my personal life but not in my career or in my greater contribution to the world. For me, that's just not sustainable for another 30 years.

As a result I learned little (of coursework anyway), my health deteriorated (played too much games), and there was tension in the family relationships because you can sense when someone is wasting their lives.

Which is the long version of: Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)

I wasted life even whilst knowing it was wrong, but what you have to do is give yourself a purpose, and getting that purpose is the hardest thing.

Since you say "which I think I am on the verge of experiencing", I'll mention a couple of things I found helpful in struggling with this. One is Jerry Weinberg's profound statement, "Never mistake the end of an illusion for the start of a crisis." That's important because those two things call for different kinds of action. The other is that relationships can shift. If you make changes, the system that has been in place can adjust and rebalance, even though it's hard and "it" doesn't want to because "it" always wants to stay the same.