Im 44. It is just work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep for me. I make jokes, i laugh at jokes. I interact with other humans regularly, but im not happy. Im not suicidal, but im not happy either.

I am a plumber by trade. Ive been doing this a long time now. I hold a couple professional licenses in the state i reside in. This is what i will do until im buried. I have moments where i enjoy what i do, but those moments are more and more fleeting. Its mostly just frustration though. Frustration because something went wrong, or parts didnt arrive when they were supposed to, or because i have to squeeze just one more service call in on a Friday at 445pm. Frustration because i got a weekend emergency call and its going to end up tanking my whole Saturday or Sunday and then Monday is back on deck. I make ok money but it isnt enough to vacation, or do anything to break up the monotony. It isnt enough to retire on. I will work until the day im six feet under. It isnt professional burnout. It isnt a midlife crisis because im not trying to relive my youth, or fuck 20 year olds, or drive a red convertible or anything like that. Its life burnout.

Ive struggled with the thought of ‘This is it, Feinsteins_Ghost. This is your life. This is how its going to be forever.’ Also always struggled with why am i doing this? Why am i in YET ANOTHER continuing ed class? Why am i reading fucking plumbing code books? Why bother? I might not even wake up tomorrow, and if theres an afterlife, im going to look back and see that i wasted my last night on Earth looking thru manufacturer literature verifying the correct lockup pressure on a goddamned propane regulator.

The struggle is fucking real, and it slaps me in the face daily. Whats the point is a very valid question to ask.

the worst is I know that thousands of people in the global south died so this could happen and I don't want it, I want less, I can afford less, I don't need this much and they need more, but I can't do much myself to truly rectify the situation

No, in fact, I am very deliberately not thinking about this

every day

I studied philosophy most of my life, graduated a relatively long time ago, have been involved in the Left for many years, am a reasonable but very religious person, and these thoughts still not only occur to me regularly but also still shake me to my core.

You may very well have these thoughts for the rest of your life.

But it's better to have them than to not. Just be forgiving to yourself.

Nope, I don't think about it. Thinking about it sucks and is unproductive and I've already determined that it's unanswerable.

... okay, I think about it a little.

We are on earth to love one another. It’s tough starting out, before you find your people. Hang in there it gets better:

talking to my parents and grandparents has made me realize how profoundly boring modern life is. my granddad can talk for hours about his life and the things he did when he was my age and all i'll have for my kids is "uhh i posted on a communist forum and looked at tiktoks."

the best thing you can do is get offline and talk to people

Realistically I'm a happy ape. All my needs are satisfied. But I am a sad human.

The hollowness of it all kills me too.

It's the soul sucking nature of capitalism turning us into homo economicus that accelerates these feelings. Existential dread has always been around, I'd wager, but it seems to be very intense in these times. Working in agriculture helped my mental health immensely. At least I am outdoors, I observe the seasons, I watch my little green buddies grow with satisfaction. It has its ups and downs and I still have depression but it's better now.

9 years of retail was killing me. Quite literally. I was drinking half a bottle of cheap whiskey nightly just to numb the pain. Smoking like a chimney. Eating fast food to soak up the alcohol then passing out in bed for another night of drunken dreamless sleep so I could do it again the next day. Don't uh... don't do that.

You may enjoy the two Philosophize This! episodes on Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity. 106 107

Personally, I found these eps better than the book, but ymmv.

need to get involved in organizing. helping my queers out is what keeps me going

The point of life is itself, it is to be and to experience the full breadth of possibility contained therein. Yet you are confined, only free to experience what limited possibilities you are structurally coerced into pursuing. And those are not random, they are those pursuits which enrich a remote and disinterested ruling class.

I have had this feeling you describe, and continue to have it. The best thing you can do for yourself, I believe, is to begin to deeply understand that what you feel you must do is every moment being manipulated to make you useful, even to your own detriment.

Every moment you manage to resist this death drive, this ghostly dog at your ankles, every moment you manage to steal rest, comfort, ease, each moment you manage to do something for yourself even if you are expected to be performing labor, or performing the appearance of labor, you get back some little sliver of yourself. Steal every second you can, every day.

That's the nausea of realizing the malignant uselessness of the universe and more so specifically feeling and living inside the universe.

Yes, it's an ancient anxiety that has birthed many religions and philosophies over the ages. Everyone is susceptible to this, but thankfully there are ways to cope with it out there, just take your pick.

It's also probably related to hitting certain milestones in life. Physically, emotionally, and socially there is a turning point in your 20s or so, and you will probably also find someone you love and care for to settle down with. If things work out, life itself will distract you for a while. Otherwise, you might make a decision like young Siddhartha Gautama or Che Guevara to set out into the world and figure out why everything seems to suck and how to fix it.

I look at it as: we create the reality we live in. Around me, I can have strong control over this. How I dress, art on walls, how to spend time, I create a sensory world. But I share this reality with other people, billions, huge spherical globe. Sometimes they try to force their stuff on me. But I love meeting artists, eccentrics, they make the shared reality more fun, interesting.

I dont look at things as, will I be judged, am I passing a test, etc. I have a limited amount of time, and it's my responsibility to make my own rules, have my own beliefs, values. Life seems to be about changing what you can, accept what you can't.

I found meaning in my life through several hobbies that I can use to make other people happy.

Totally valid. I go through the same shit a lot. Doing art has been helpful for me

Holy shit same.

My degree is useless and I'm unemployable. I've been stuck in rural Texas for all my life and I can't even afford rent on mimimum wage. My only hope is to go back to college, rack up more debt and force myself to get a STEM degree and MAYBE...just maybe someone will hire me. Not likely though because every job gets thousands of applicants. Why do we make life so hard, who are we trying to impress? How can we brag about our work ethic, when there are a whole bunch of people where work is denied to them?

As for finding community, maybe my best bet is to settle for a city here in Texas or something. The one good thing about republicans is that they keep property values low. I know there's Austin but for any Texan comrades here, is DFW a decent enclave for "undesirables"?

Yeah, there is no ultimate point to anything. Never was or ever will be. You have to decide for yourself what the point is.

Lately I've been dealing with this existential crisis by getting high and watching youtube videos about mysteries of the universe, and what's beyond it. Just like, embracing how weird all this shit is, you know?

i feel the exact same. the responsibilities imposed upon me by modern capitalism are too much to bear. i hate my life and i dread waking up every morning and continuing the meaningless cycles of days until the last breath i take. it’s what capitalism wants us to feel. i would recommend getting organized anyways. it’s the only thing that i’ve found that gives me some semblance of hope, of meaning.

simplistic religions and other capitalist and mechanistic belief systems have stripped the soul out of life. it is all reduced to consumerism and individualistic 'self expression' via consumption. try to learn something from the world around you, it is ripe with meaning waiting to be percieved and created and discovered. read weird books. think about things from perspectives you would never consider before. let yourself be intentionally irrational and unintentionally rational in all the ways that humans must be. you are more than just your ego-consciousness, it is an integral part of your self but your mind encompasses much you will never be aware of. there is only so much information that is comprehensible in the traditional human format of linear-time sequential narrative experience.

I think David Byrne said it best when he said

And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

That's just life tbh. I have tried to make it so that early retirement is viable so I can get a few good years of freedom before I'm completely infirm and/or dead.