Ask HN: Are you happy, well-rounded? (dealing w/ depression/lack of motivation)

When you get older and things like family start to pull on your attention, you'll realize that if you really gave it your best shot, that's good enough, whether you were a famous smashing success or not. Just work towards being happy for yourself, not towards what you perceive the community expects you to achieve.

1. Do something impossible! I rode my bike to work 25 miles in the morning and 25 miles at night. This was something I thought was impossible, and I only got to do it a couple times a week but it gave me lots of time to think and work though my issues. Find your impossible task and do it.

2. Learn something new. When I teach myself something new it is a very euphoric experience and after I then want to do something with that new knowledge.

3. Lots have been said about gardening and yep it is all true do it now!

4. Exercise for 30 minutes first thing and your day will start out much better.

5. Eat local/healthy food. Good food makes you feel better.

My experience is that the happiness range of college is 4-8, with a peak around 7, and that of adulthood is 2-9, with a peak around 4.5. The range is much wider and the peak of the curve is lower, but there's much more potential upside. In college, the star performers have as good a life as the average students. The "real world" has the potential to be really amazing, but for the median player, it's pretty shitty. The fact that even the most talented 25-year-olds live in fear of being in the latter category creates a lot of anxiety, and it can be overwhelming.

Some advice: Definitely see the therapist, assuming you can afford it, and make sure that you're taking care of basic needs (exercise, nutrition, sex).

You said: Or if I do know exactly where I want to live, I'm always terrified that I'll regret the move later.

Remember that you can always move back. No one's expecting you to buy a house. People who leave New York come back, and people who come to New York from Chicago, Minneapolis often go back. As scary as "starting over" socially is, it's a smaller cost than the upside of living in the right place for you. Besides, you probably only have 3 to 6 real friends in your city at this point, and those you'll keep regardless of your move. (New York may be a special case; it's easier and cheaper to live elsewhere and visit 2 weeks each year, which a lot of people do, than to live here, because of the massively overpriced housing).

Anyway. I'm 28 and I have been struggling almost forever to find something captivating. In recent years, solving useless problems helped (http://www.caesum.com/game/index.php in case you'd like it) but oddly enough I don't manage to play this more than one week a year. Generally speaking, I try to get interested in some things but I soon feel indifferent to it. (I guess I'm just describing a depression symptom.) Anyway this doesn't make a living.

I've read people around here (including PG) writing they were poor employees and it reassured for some weeks since I really am a pitiful one (to say the least). But since then I came to realize that comparing myself to this kind of people was outrageously pretentious. I may not be stupid but I can no longer do anything. I have long liked to blame school and parents for this since it was not the same in my early childhood. But blaming does not help.

The most awful thing I sometimes come to think is exactly what people suggested to you: it's what adulthood is like, you are through some age crisis. If that's how life is, I should have hanged long ago. (But that's not good karma. etc. -- Nicely put.)

I guess, like others suggested, a key point is finding something valuable to do. Anything you feel rewarding. Especially if it may have measurable success, I would say. Helping others is good provided either these people do not overlook your efforts or you are confident enough to value your efforts by yourself. Actually, do anything you can achieve now with the energy you have in store. I can testify that the more you wait the less energy you have. (But this doesn't prevent me from still waiting.)

The best would be to find a field in which your efforts can add up. Founding a startup may be captivating and hence a therapy. But how could people like me (I wouldn't ) show the needed strength? My last effort to be on topic shamefully fails. Anyway, I took for granted that your problem comes from your job which is far from being clear.

Sorry for the English (or for telling nonsense (which is almost the same in my case)).

If I had edit powers remaining, I would remove that line.