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I'm trying to think of a single actually useful thing I ever worked on..
You have worked on earning money to live in your world. Good job. Don't over think work.
I would also encourage that, to be honest. Maybe you learned something, maybe built some relations, maybe made a mental exercise and became a better person.
Turns out the customer didn't read the (enormously expensive) SOW. They don't want the product, can't ingest its output, don't want to do the work necessary to implement it, and on a recent roadmap review listed its function as their absolute last priority. I am not sure whether there's been a change in management, or some salesperson talked really fast, or what.
I am trying to appreciate this as 'salary for nothing' and use the time to study for other things but it turns out that for me this is an anxiety-inducing and unhappy experience.
I'm trying to think of a single actually useful thing I ever worked on..
You have worked on earning money to live in your world. Good job. Don't over think work.
That said, I also never believe anything I do is useful and that also isn’t why I do what I do.
I understand the need to put your best foot forward for a sales opportunity, but there's nothing I hate more than being asked to build something in the lowest-quality way possible in order to throw it away later. I hate hate hate it.
The silver lining is that now you don't have to maintain it. Maintenance is hell.
The software for an exascale EU Horizon 2020 supercomputer that never got built.
I've probably created a hundred or more proofs of concept for things that turned out to be a bad idea. Say these averaged out to a week or so of work each, and that's about two full years of useless work.
And that's ok! Most stuff you work on will get thrown away before you leave a company, and the rest will get thrown away not long after that.
This doesn't really bum me out, but I can certainly understand why people experience it that way.
Honestly though, I think it's worse when things I've created do persist for a long time. They're never nearly good enough and I hate to think that they still exist nonetheless.
I guess my point is: try not to sweat this stuff; it will drive you crazy.