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
I'd agree that a lack of a goal/purpose is a part of the problem and some of my better moments has been when I've had a big project to cook on.
I just have a very hard time internally generating those kinds of goals that matter enough to have staying power. Like you said though, I've been (for better or worse) outsourcing some of that to helping my friends and neighbors with some of their problems which at least gets me doing something.
It does leave me feeling a little hollow though, like I don't have anything of importance inside to actually care about and be motivated by. And it does sometimes lead to feeling like I'm just around to help people do things instead of being around because I'm wanted around for who I am (I don't think it's really like this, but I do get those kinds of feelings).
...and...
I don't know if this is what you're facing, but there was something else I learned when I was younger that matched this situation. I wasn't able to find joy in my hobbies/activities/diversions because I was avoiding doing something else specific I knew in my heart I should do instead. Not having accomplished this specific thing made me privately feel like a (partial) failure, even if I was taking care of all my day to day responsibilities and everyone else thought I was doing well in life. I spent a few years trying to avoid it before finally coming to terms with this understanding I'm laying out right here. I then sat down and started the hard work of planning how I'd move forward to finally accomplish what I had been avoiding. It took many years, but I was eventually successful. It was a lot of hard work and sacrifice but not only did I feel the great sense of accomplishment, but I was able to enjoy my hobbies again without any subconscious guilt from not working toward the goal I needed to but was avoiding.
Again, I don't know if this is what you're facing, and you don't have to tell me if it is. However, take some time to ask yourself if you're in a similar situation explore the idea and get it into words. Just that alone is progress. Its not the end, but its the required beginning to finally moving forward on addressing the primary challenge.