I don't like being down but I've been trying to find an answer for a while and haven't really gotten anywhere, so I guess I just need some kind of different perspective.
For a while, I just haven't been feeling great. Like my mood is baseline low and while hanging out with friends sometimes moments can be silly or fun but it doesn't really help uplift me overall.
I get really jealous of people who are passionate and genuinely love what they do for work/fun, people who just can't be stopped. I feel almost the opposite. There's plenty of things I'm capable of or that I'm good at, but nothing that really sparks joy. I feel like knowing a lot about things doesn't really mean much if you can't/don't actually do anything with it.
I'm very computer capable, I tend to DIY what I can at home and I try to help my friends when I can. Most of my friends are from high school or college and live farther away from me, which is annoying and limits me to seeing them every now and then on the weekends. Occasionally, we try to do things online to help alleviate the distance problem but it's frankly just not the same. I grew up being primarily online and have been trying so, so hard to spend time with people offline recently.
I always feel like I should be more social and make new friends that live closer to me or match up with my interests more. One of the primary things people tell you is to, "Go do something you enjoy doing by yourself and then meet other people there." It's just so difficult to start when you aren't really having fun in the first place. It's like trying to win a race when you don't even have a car...
I spent a year trying to work out if there was something medically wrong and that process was brutal. It felt like every time I changed medication to get after a set of symptoms, I had some form of side effects that made things worse without really seeing improvements. Eventually I got to the point where I couldn't handle trying anything new because it was just so exhausting. We ended up at the point of there, "maybe being some inkling of ASD/ADHD" but requiring more evaluation that I didn't go through with before losing access to my good insurance. Even if that were the case, I'm stuck on the practical "so what" part of the equation with the fact that most of what we tried didn't really help very much.
Moral of the story I guess is that I'm feeling very stuck right now and a little scared/worried that it's just going to be like this in perpetuity. I come from an engineering background and I'm used to having real answers and troubleshooting and incremental progress and understanding, and none of that is really coming through for me right now. I consider myself relatively well-off, which makes me feel awful when compared to how hard it is for a lot of people at the moment - and in some ways that makes me more scared that if I'm already struggling now, how will I manage if my situation does degrade?
It's not very inspiring and I'd really appreciate some advice... -CC
Hey kid, you're asking some good questions here. Your old man is an engineer too, and I've been in the same spot.
First thing I'd say is to re-read your post and count how many times you mention something that you should or shouldn't be doing or feeling. Seems like you're feeling a lot of pressure to do or be something that you aren't right now. And with all that pressure looming over your head, it's no wonder that it's hard to find joy in anything. It's common for kids your age to feel like they're not living up to their potential--your old man's generation screwed the pooch on that one. But thinking through where that pressure is coming from might help get to the root of why you feel this way.
And if you don't feel like you're getting anywhere with that, do the same thing you'd do with an engineering problem--get another set of eyes on the problem. Not sure if you know, but I've seen a couple of therapists in my time. It can be tricky to find one that clicks with you, but it can be really helpful to talk to an expert on these things.