Ask HN: Finally have loose change and spare time, but no sense of purpose. Help.

1. Find someone who needs help.

2. Help them.

That's it. It's not about you and your skills and your intelligence and your blessings and your depression and your inner psychology etc. etc. etc. It's about others.

They may need help in an area you're already familiar with, but maybe not. Either way, you'll learn something new, they'll get where they need to be, and your situation will profoundly morph into something else.

The sooner you start helping someone else, the sooner you will wonder how you could have ever posted this. A hundred ideas will come your way when you least expect them, along with the energy to do something about them. You will find that there's lots to be done and you're the perfect person to do them. You'll have a different problem then. You'll need help getting all of it done. So you'll be making a very different post to hn. I'm looking forward to that one.

"Better" is subjective and based on multiple variables. IMHO Ferrari makes better cars than Ford but Ford sells plenty of cars. I think Reddit is better than Digg, but plenty of people disagree.

Be careful not to fall into a trap of seeing things as black and white. There's a lot of fun and money in the grays ;-)

+1, I like to travel too, and perhaps spending a month trotting around Europe would be an eye-opening experience, but I always think you'd get back home and think "well... now what?". Similar to the feeling I get when I finish watching a movie - enjoyable for the duration, but no real lasting benefit.

I can't speak for you, but I can share my ideas about what I would do in that position (I am a 27 year old developer with a good education and work experience):

Take some taught courses to get my weaknesses up to scratch - for me it's Mathematics and Motivation. I don't know how the second can be fixed but the first is easy.

Then I would specialise in my interest areas - for me it's machine learning in various forms. Probably I'd do a PhD.

I'd seek to network a lot better than I have in the past. I have friends working for very exciting companies, and I think if we all got together something amazing could happen, but they're mostly in London and I'm not. I'd fix that too.

So in summary, my plan would be to get my knowledge and skills up to speed, and then arrange my life to coincide with like-minded individuals as much as possible.

Short answer: Yes.

Why are you so attached to having a full-time job? Is the point of life to just spend all of it working and accumulating cash? You're in a great position to grant yourself a sabbattical/mini-retirement/etc. I also have no idea what abyss you're worried about falling into; it sounds like you're already in one. Jobs are a commodity, lifetimes aren't.

Or you could look at it as a new job: you're going to be employed by yourself with the objective of reinventing yourself and learning to live. Your task is to spend 40 hours/week on moving toward self-actualization: learning to be independent, having a girlfriend, and finding your passions. (Edit: And spend time volunteering and making a difference in others' lives as people have suggested in this thread.)

Where in California are you? I know a couple of "hacker houses" in Berkeley and SF that are filled with interesting and passionate people. You could spend a couple months in one and immerse yourself in a fun, interesting, engaging environment.

Relevant: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1112823,00....

You should also check out the book "4 Hour Work Week". I don't subscribe to the literal idea of a 4 hour work week, but the life-optimization philosophy explained in it is inspirational and makes a lot of sense.