Hey there and thanks for this post.
It is always refreshing to see the world through the eyes or in this case words of someone else.
Love how you described the inevitable hard and unpredictable turns that life gives us.

I used to compare myself a lot to my old peers, although I barely knew what they were actually doing. In these times social media can often times blur the reality of what people are actually doing vs. presenting to be doing. Never have I been super active on Facebook and co, but from time to time I saw a low percentage of my old peers post beautiful travel pictures, luxury, their university achievements etc. But this is only a fraction and many people are also struggling in the harsher and competitive environments.

When I have met some of them in person, they were also not all in top-paying jobs and sometimes working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet.

Anyways, I think we often forget that we have to make ourselves our mental point of origin (meaning prioritizing our dreams and goals for ourselves). Listen to yourself and if you enjoy this new field of work and your profession (and this is what it actually sounds like, because you said that you could take the experience from your old job and finally grow into a strong person that is leading tasks in her workplace), this is probably worth more than all the money combined. Very few people get to live a life with passion and no regrets and I'm truly convinced these are the people that don't show off and compare themselves to the societies standards all the time.

Sorry for the long rant, but your post got my thoughts flowing, very inspiring :)