I'm happiest when busy building and fixing things

For what it's worth, I have dealt with pretty severe depression for most of my adult life. I am only starting to have periods of coming out when I realized that most of depressed feelings come from a place of ego. I have an identity of who I am and what I like, and I seek things in the external world which might provide meaning for me. For me, it's because I always sought value from the things around me, rather than believing that I am already enough. Every single day, I have to beat down my instincts that tell me that I am worthless and remind myself that there is more beauty in the world and it's actually absurd that I am letting society tear away from me my natural instincts to want to live and enjoy life. You have to really sit with these feelings though... like really really get to know your voice vs the internalized societal voice. I have developed "tests" that help me discern whic…

That's exactly the problem, "meaning in life" has no static definition and there is no possible way to explain it in general terms, even for people who proclaim to have "found" it. Pills, on the other hand, are easy to understand. This is not to say that they are a viable substitute in any way, but it does explain why so many prefer substance treatments.

> I'm fortunate to have had lots of unique experiences and traveled to lots of unique places For comparison I've barely traveled more than 1000kms. Never had a passport. Travel is not related. > where day-to-day life was focused on building and fixing things to survive, then I would have felt very fulfilled and done quite well. Incorrect assumption; It's not the building and busy-ness. And the experience doing hobbies supports that. Nothing fills that "hole". The feeling, the "hole" you're missing, is a combi-mix of purpose/meaning/larger-picture. I know it because I also had it. Many people try politics to fill their hole too, which also doesn't work: political parties are not big enough. I'm not going to try to persuade you to change your life, I'm going to talk about what did it for me, and you (and others) can spectate and speculate, take and leave whatever you want. I'm sure I'll ge…

> So my career has been in software engineering since that involves building and fixing and pays well, but it still doesn't fill the hole. A brief thought on this - I’ve found working in large software companies to be fairly unfulfilling, but working at smaller shops focused on delivering something other than software, or for which there’s some tangible connection to the real world, to be much more fulfilling. At its best, software engineering is indeed a craft and something you can take pride in and something where you can have a real impact on people’s lives by building things. A lot of that gets lost somewhere between the third roadmap meeting and the weekly scrum session to figure out how to prioritize product’s requests alongside paying down tech debt so we can improve ad unit performance, but the craft of software itself is still a creative act.