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I thought of something to write up last night and was going to post it in the morning, but like usual, things I think about while laying in bed escape me. I'll take a shot of trying to get my point across now. I feel like there's something wrong with the millennial generation. I am forced to grind out work. The only time I take off of work is at the end of the year. I feel like I don't really belong. My coworkers are always saying how helpful I am, and I feel like they are lying. I'm working a dead end engineering job, and my coworkers don't seem to think it's a dead end career. I want to do something aspirational, but I know that I have limits, and I'm not as good as the people who manage large open source projects. I have the fire to implement someone else's dream, but no passion of my own. I also have no life. I don't go outside, and my only friends are one small group online. My main source of life advice is my mother, who feeds me a "never sell yourself short narrative", but also doesn't push me to grow up. I'm 31 and still live with her despite making $120k USD now. I feel like I don't really have the freedom to do anything in life, if I wanted to. Am I just fuarrrked? I have an emptiness in my life that I cannot fill. I am afraid of making any real change in my life, because I don't want to burn any bridges. I am in a really good place. I am much better off than other millennials. I don't want to lose what little ground I've gained over other people in my generation, but at the same time I am constantly (on a weekly basis) second guessing myself. I want to run away from life. It seems like lots of other people in my generation have already done that with so many people seemingly becoming transgender and simping out to internet influencers and parasocial relationships. This pandemic is even worse because I don't agree with the constant paranoia of people online, especially in politics. I just want to be happy, but no matter what I do, no matter how much effort I put in I can never find happiness. Can any of us actually find happiness? Is this something other people deal with or is it just me? I feel like I will always be paranoid about my life being destroyed from under me. I will always be afraid that people who have control over my success will fail, and by extension make me fail. The worst part is I am afraid of people's lack of action will in the end make me suffer, and they may not realize that. And what's worse is that I can't explain this to anyone. I try and explain this and I'm told to just man up and deal with it and that's life. I'm told to just take drugs (I'm very much against using drugs in solving my own problems). I just don't know. I feel like myself and everyone around me are idiots and nobody is doing anything right. People older than me are just lazy and afraid of losing their jobs in the middle of a pandemic, and people younger than me are just afraid. Everyone is just afraid. I'm tired of being afraid. I'm tired of there being a hole in my chest. People just say to suck it up and move on so I do, but it's going to hurt me in the long run more than it ever hurts them. Then people say, well burn your bridges and run away, and I can't do that either. That's failure and I don't want to fail.

>>49928 Did you get into Engineering because your parents wanted you to because it makes you look smart? If this is the case, 31 is probably too late to quit, it will take you an inordinate amount of time to regain your "passion" in another field, time only an early 20-something has. You kind of have to grit and bear it, this is your life now. The pangs will go away as you enter your 40s. You will grow old like your parents.

>>49936 No, I chose to go into software engineering the moment I first used a computer. My parents were pretty apathetic to what I actually did as long as "I got an education". Even then, they didn't (and probably don't) see the value of a Bachelor's Degree over an Associate's Degree or even a High School diploma. I really don't talk to them much, but they have really no idea what I do, or why I get paid as much as I get paid, or at least if they do, they've never really expressed it in a way that shows that they do. At the end of the day, I really enjoy solving problems, and I really hate management. It's just grind, grind, grind. Fail, fail, fail. No room for success. You just bang your head against the wall, try and heard the sheep. Try and get people to understand that a successful product is more than just writing some code. If there isn't even a clear direction, there is no way a project can ever succeed. For the past 6 months or so, I've been debating leaving my current job. The executives do not seem to have any desire to create a successful product. Management has been completely replaced, and I've been through this before. I have been praised by the CTO of the company before how important I am, but I really don't see it. I write code. Nobody uses my code. People barely review or understand it. It's just grinding for money with no real aspiration.

>>49945 >It's just grind, grind, grind. Fail, fail, fail. No room for success. You just bang your head against the wall, try and herd the sheep. Try and get people to understand that a successful product is more than just writing some code. If there isn't even a clear direction, there is no way a project can ever succeed. Damn english.

>>49928 How about renting a small but top-floor (for sound isolation/temperature in cold season) appartement somewhere in the oval between your work and where your family lives? At $120k that should be way affordable and it will get you a change of luck (moving always does) and an initial perspective on independent living.

>>49969 And doing your own cooking is a good, natural way to bring regular learning into your life. You'll know you aren't learning right when your food doesn't taste as good as usual.

>>49928 OP you're me except you are giving in. I'm in almost an identical situation but I'm not giving in. I'd decided that civilization is a mistake and the best a man can do in life is disassemble it. Perhaps that's what most people already realized and are trying to do with their incompetence but that's a very low-effort take on it. A solution on par with closing your eyes when in a dark room - might as well. A step in the right direction would be de-urbanization and/or some type of destructive career. Either outright demolition of old useless buildings or lean extra into it and move slightly toward hyper-competitive parts of the economy - things like automation that destroys jobs. Now that's evolutionary pressure turned back up to 11.

>>50025 >toward hyper-competitive parts of the economy - things like automation that destroys jobs Turn the serpent on itself. Use greed of increased margins to automate away and destroy jobs. Rile people up against incompetent bureaucracy.