I don't know what to do with my life anymore

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Marshall I understand where your coming from. Remember that all cultures are fundamentally the same in that their main goal is to control their own people. This bad for b-types like you and I because they expect us to work tirelessly.

While I acknowledge the system is designed not to benefit us but to control us, I must also acknowledge that there is absolutely nothing you or I can do to change this.

We can't change the rules of their game so the best we can do is play the game by their rules. They set the game up to control it yet the way we can incur the least misery is to play the game and win.

If you win you don't control the game, anymore than a winning football team gets to rewrite the rules. Winning grants you no control but you get penalized less.My ex told me to try antidepressants but I'm scared, what if they cause me to lose my edge? Or worse, what if they cause me to lose my motivation? That might make me content with the problems in my life so I won't attempt to solve them. Antidepressants might make me feel fatigued or lethargic or slow witted.

I'm sorry you're feeling down.

Have you seen a doctor yet?

I would advise, totally, against self-medicating.

Not yet, maybe I should see a doctor soon.

I don't want to self-medicate. Sometimes I feel like I don't want to take medication of any sort. I'm worried psychiatric medication might mess up my head.

If not prescribed right, it WILL mess up your head.

You see many of these sorts of situations right here on WP.

Psych meds can mess you up, and sometimes it's a hell of trial and error before you find what works for you. I hope you can find an amazing doc to work with like I had. "Better living through chemistry" has been working for me for about twenty years now. Same meds, same dosage.

Instruction booklet:

1. Call your doctor and set up an appointment. Today. Tell them you suffer from exhaustion, and that your gf suggested it might be diabetes. That is a useful piece of info for them.
2. Actually go there. Say the same thing again.
3. Follow the doctor's instructions.
4. When you feel better, start thinking about what you want from life. A depressed brain doesn't make good decisions.

I know the mind loop you are in. You keep trying to solve the question of the meaning of life, so you can use your energy more effectively, instead of picking up the phone and seeing what happens.

The parable of the poison arrow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_o ... oned_Arrow

Good luck!

just live it. all you have to do to live it is breathe. i will breathe until i can not do so any more and then my life will be over. i just ride in the stream and look around at things, but i do not really care too much about anything, so i never get snagged.

when your life is over, it is over "for ever" (like it was before you were born), so i guess you will always be alive even if those lives are separated by an infinity of time.

I just wanted to say that uni doesn't always equal success. You can be plenty successfull without it. I would get your medical issue and depression sorted before worrying about work and such.

The right antidepressants can make a he'll of a difference and your mood should improve with your health.

After that you can sit back quietly and have a think. If you get stuck between 2 options flip a coin. If your dissapointed with the winning option go with the other option. It makes you realise which you'd rather have

Do what makes you happy.

Yes, I know that sounds so annoying at first... because if you knew what makes you happy you wouldn't be making this post.

Always search for what brings you joy. If your answer is nothing, keep searching. When you find something, keep searching. Try to find all the things in life that bring you joy. They will change as you go through life. That's why you have to always be on the look out for what brings you joy (and why).

Just start looking. Pick any activity that is new and might make you happy. Try it.

The hardest part for me was that I was afraid of change. I kept being upset when things lost their ability to give me joy. But I still did not want to change. I then realized that change is inevitable. The joy spinning wheels gave me as a child is gone. That is okay because I have new completely unexpected things that bring me joy now. Hiking gives me joy because I am alone in nature. Judo gives me joy because it is both a very technical and physical sport.

Still no clue where to start?

Try a non-team physical activity like running, hitting a punching bag, bicycling, hiking, judo, Sombo, Krav Maga, boxing, ect.

Try a hand eye activity and really focus on perfection. Models, archery, coloring book, painting, sculpting, ect.

Know yourself and you will know what to do with your life.

You are right Alliekit. Thanks for reminding me. I need to stop these narratives in my head about how people who are superior to me go to university and work harder than I can and understand concepts that I can't and then get a job in their field of study right after graduation like my annoyingly perfect cousin did. He doesn't know how I feel about him because he's always nice to everyone.

He's like Ned Flanders, healthy, right and morally perfect. And he's always nice to me which makes the insult even worse. I'm like Homer Simpson. Mad at how Cousin Flanders is so perfect and rich, even though he's never said an unkind word to me.

But you're right Alliekit. There are people who went to uni and ended up in a crappy job like retail. There are other people who went to uni and ended up in a good job but totally different from their field of study.

Case in point, at my work there's been a big push lately to hire "STEM recruits". Just recently they hired about 150 of them. The work is IT but STEM is a very broad field. They don't need to have bachelors of software engineering or computer science to qualify.

They could be mechanical engineers, etc. The lady who sits at the same lunch table as me has a PhD in biology and she got in on the STEM recruitment program.

I asked the brass why they want to hire people with non IT degrees and why a non IT degree is any better than no degree and they said because even though these science graduates don't know about IT, the fact that they completed a science degree proves that they're hard workers. They also said their science degree prepared them for IT work by teaching them how to be problem solvers.

I found this terribly depressing. That management expects most of us to have a degree even if it's in an unrelated field. At first I thought it was silly. Then I thought management was right and that made it even more depressing. Like they think it means I'm not a hard worker. Like they think I'm not a good problem solver.

Maybe they're right. That's depressing. Problem solving? It's like nature vs nurture. If intelligence is decided by nature then I was born with what I got. If intelligence is determined by experience then maybe I missed out on a challenging experience that would have made me better at solving problems. Maybe the PhD lady had the same intelligence as me in childhood but all the problem solving she did leveled up her intelligence.

Even the process of gaining entrance to university could be a challenge that levels them up. You need good grades in high school. I didn't make the bar. I barely graduated high school. I feel like even 16 and 17 year olds are morally and intellectually superior to me because they're working towards entering university. Intellectually superior because I see them doing algebra and calculus homework on the train. I never understood either. Morally superior because of their superior work ethic. At that age I did the bare minimum. They put in a lot of hours. I stop when I get tired. When they get tired they keep going.

They're even better organised than me. Being good at study requires you to not only work hard but be organised. Actually finding out the entrance requirements for your chosen field and matching them requires more organisation than I had. Choosing a major requires more determination than I had.

Maybe I shouldn't focus on that. I keep thinking I didn't work hard in high school because I was lazy. Maybe I was just extremely tired due to depression or diabetes or chronic fatigue syndrome or these weird sedatives the doctor made me take when I was in high school.

But if my fatigue was caused by medical problems then I feel bad for not seeking out treatment. I thought it was normal to feel tired. I thought everyone else felt tired but they kept going because they had superior willpower. If I have some medical problem that makes me tired I'm going to be so mad I didn't get it diagnosed 15 years ago so I could have been more productive in my teens and early 20s.

Anyway, I don't like to remind you of that misogynistic thread set up to attack you but I was intrigued by the discussion of whether depression was caused by chemistry or life situation.

An intriguing question but I honestly don't know the answer. Maybe chemistry because a few years ago I was in a very bad life situation that started my depression. When my problems went away, the depression remained. At the time I thought "If only I could solve these problems then I wouldn't be depressed at all". I was wrong.

Maybe the trigger of depression is situational but then it subsequently becomes a chemical problem, so much so that it persists long after the problem that caused it has been solved.

Maybe I should take antidepressants, I'm just scared too because when I was about 14 or 15 the doctor put me on some psychiatric sedative drugs that screwed me up in the head. I don't want to go through that again.

I would advise against you taking anti-depressants, unless your therapist thinks you need them.

Marshall will correct me if I'm wrong---but doesn't it seem like RetroGamer has more situational than chemical depression?

I just feel RetroGamer, like many of us here, feels like he's in a quandary.

He's actually doing quite well, and has progressed considerably over the past year. He has a long way to go....but at least he's not stagnant.

On the lady front, I feel RetroGamer will do much better as he gets older, and more experienced.

Maybe you are right Kraftie. I just thought that as soon as I got a good job and a nice apartment the depression would go away. Like if I solved the bad situation I wouldn't have situational depression.

Some days I focus on problems but other days I just feel void. Like I can't even enjoy things that usually make me happy.

It all seems futile then. Instead of thinking I can't achieve my goals I feel like all goals are pointless. Even after I achieve them I will still be sad. Then what is the point of achieving them? That's futility.

I'm not sure: are you seeing a therapist now?

When is your next vacation from your job? Maybe you could have a good time, then. It's getting cooler where you are; maybe you could go up to Queensland, to the beach?

Or maybe you could go to a Donkey Kong convention or something like that.

That sounds like chemical depression to me. I would know. Had it most of my life.

If the feelings of anhedonia and sense that everything is pointless are just transient fleeting feelings, then it may be nothing. If he is experiencing these feelings every single day it is very likely to be beginnings of clinical depression or at least dysthymia. I would urge him to try to do something about it sooner rather than later. It can get much much worse.

The situation usually triggers the chemical imbalance. And antidepressents are different from sedatives, sedatives sound horrible to be on.

Why would they find science people for IT? I study science and certainly would struggle in an IT job! None of my family have gone to uni and have all done well for themselves

Better late than never for seeking help