Has anyone gone into their PhD already not planning to stay in academia, but because they simply loved their research and wanted to continue doing it for a few years?

I am a 3rd year astrophysics PhD studying observations of star formation. I realize, with the help of my therapist, that I have no passion for my field and am planning to leave with my master's at the end of the semester because I simply feel like my research interests and my department's interests are incompatible. I feel severely depressed and disconnected with my research and the other astronomers here and I am actually very passionate about theoretical stellar astrophysics and asteroseismology. In fact, I spend my time reading papers in this field and playing around with a stellar evolution code than doing tasks related to my current project/field.

Note that I actually worked 4 years on theoretical stellar astrophysics and asteroseismology as an undergraduate student. I have a co-authored paper and several conference presentations from that time. In grad school, I have 0 conference presentations and I am not even close to my first paper in grad school.

However, I realized 2 years into my PhD that I do not want to stay in academia beyond the PhD (low salary, bad WLB, toxic elitist people, feeling a constant urge to prove myself, etc.) and would rather pursue a data science job or something similar. I enjoy coding and gathering insights from analyzing data.

I spoke with my advisor and they mentioned that it is not possible for me to work on a joint project with a theorist. I would not want to work with anyone else in my department anyway, because if I am going to dedicate the rest of my 20s on a PhD, I would rather it be something I am very passionate about (theoretical stellar astrophysics, asteroseismology). Unfortunately, the astronomers in my department are all observers and none are stellar astrophysicists. My advisor also mentioned that it is okay if I realize my heart is not in the work I am currently doing and it may be the best interest for myself and my career to work somewhere else, stating that if I don't have enough intrinsic interest in my work, a PhD is going to be very difficult.

I personally would like to apply for PhD positions in my desired field in the next application cycle, as I feel I would regret if I jumped straight into DS thinking "What if I took that risk and stayed in the academic arena for a few more years doing the research I love?" What do you all think?