Am I Doing Too Much?

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It took me a long time to ruminate on exactly what kind of things I really want to talk about here. But I think I have arrived at one, finally. I'll probably repost this in other autism related community spaces as well so I can get more feedback and advice. It's going to be part-TLDR life story and part-advice solicitation, btw. So in any event, here it goes:

I've reached 40 years of living. In that time I have done a few things. I worked on being a talented artist (mostly drawing but also a few other mediums, a little bit of piano, a little bit of acting, and writing), which started petering out around my mid-20s. My excuse at the time was that I couldn't afford to pursue it further and take any unnecessary job risks that could lead me to poverty; I needed a job/career/skill to fall back on in hard times or to keep me alive enough to actually work on art. At first I thought I could get into psychology, but it was 2008 and everyone and their mom was clogging up graduate programs to escape the Great Recession, and my academic CV was too mid to be accepted by anyone. So then, I managed to get IT-certified and did that for most of my 30s. It was fine and great, until I got into a complicated relationship and brought a child into the world. I really loved the little guy, so I stayed together as long as I could until I just couldn't anymore. In the end, I was briefly married and then things got so toxic so quickly that I had to initiate a divorce. I lost custody of my child through what was essentially an abduction by the mother to go live out in California. She was very abusive towards me when we were together and this just seemed like yet another way to make me hurt. While all this happened I got fired from the best IT contract job I ever had, so I was no longer of use to her financially. To this day I am not allowed to contact my son, and I lack the money to sue for visitation or any kind of custody.

But that's not what this subject is mainly about. I've accepted that current circumstances are just not ideal for me to properly raise a child. And if it comes to pass that I simply cannot ever see him, then at least there is the hope that my son, who looks like me and also has autism, may want to reach out on his own and find me when he gets older. No, what I want to talk about is what kind of dreams can I practically achieve now that I am all alone again.

Currently I live with my elderly father, taking care of him during the day and evening. He doesn't have long to live, so I try to help him as much as I can. I have siblings close by to help out, but they have their own families and homes to attend to, whereas I have neither of those to call my own. I rely on dad for food and housing, and recently I took on a new trade in a desperate attempt to learn a useful skill, which is to be an electrician. For the rest of my time, when not working full time, or nursing dad (also full time), I have been mostly playing video games; something I have been spending a large amount of free time on since I was 5 or 6. But I started feeling that existential dread that creeps in when you approach 40: that age when our primordial ancestors would have generally met the end of their lives, yet modern society has annoyingly decided to extend all the way into a mere "mid-life" checkpoint. In that vein, I suddenly had the urge to be overly ambitious, to make up for lost time and wasted youth. So I made some goals that I MUST achieve, or at least shoot for, before I die:

-Restore my physical health and weight to the way it was 20 years ago
-finally learn Japanese and visit Japan at least once
-Get back into drawing and writing and publish some artwork/stories/etc.
-Figure out a way to monetize all those years of experience playing video games so I don't feel like it was all a waste of time (i.e. streaming or making online content)

Those are really the main ones that weigh on my mind. But as I have been throwing myself into them, I am having my doubts that I can actually do all of them successfully. I feel like, I may have to leave some big dreams behind to die because 40 years is much too late to start behaving like a starry-eyed youth full of boundless vitality (which I possess neither). I feel like...I'm not even successful at living independently financially speaking, despite my many fierce attempts at striking it out on my own and failing spectacularly.

So, my dear readers. What do you think? Am I doing too much? Am I doing too little? What the hell am I even doing, really? Please give me your candid thoughts. Thank you for your time.

I get that. I'll be turning 40 in 7 months and 3 days. It has definitely turned up the pressure on wanting to accomplish my life goals. I have been telling myself that I can ramp up for 5 more years, to get really established in my career, and then enjoy the momentum I build up from that into retirement. I don't know if that's necessarily how things will / do work, but it makes me feel better about where I'm at. But honestly, I think you can grow and learn and progress at any age. Aside from paying the bills, what's important to me is the sense of meaning and accomplishment I get from making satisfying progress in my goals and interests each day. I try to judge that by my own standards as best I can. One thing that time has done for me, which you might consider, is to drive home the need to focus my efforts. I suppose you can do a little of everything in life, but you probably won't accomplish much in any one thing that way. I like to thing about having "T-shaped" interests (or maybe "TTTT-shaped" for me), where I'm a little interested in many things and a lot interested in a few things. I guess the things you've listed seem doable all at once, to me. I think you have some fairly ambitious goals, but not unrealistic. I like to set goals like that too, but I try not to be too hard on myself if it takes longer than I expect to reach them. That's how it seems to me, anyways, but what do I know. There I go a ramblin' again.

But going back and reading your post some more, I get the impression that your siblings are reasonably nice and you get along with them pretty well. That is a great thing to have, even if they are busy. And I'm very sorry to hear about the situation with your ex-wife and your son. I had a situation very similar to that about ten years ago, but no child came out of it for me. I think learning skills as an electrician is a very good idea and hope you're able to find steady work in that field.