Ask HN: Are you depressed?

I'm depressed, anxious, and lost.

I'm 38, married, and I have two daughters.

My career seems to be stuck. I work in IT, but I don't think I'm actually very good in any specific aspect of it. I suck at debugging. I write Python but I never learned how to use the Python debugger. I'm no good at project management either. Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass. It's even worse when I'm asked to make long term planning with a Gantt chart. I don't know how to advance my career. I don't know whether I want to pursue a technical path or a (project) management path. Just in terms of programming languages, there are so many out there that I don't know, but that I think I should know - e.g. rust, haskell, elixir, clojure, kotlin - and I'm anxious of missing out. Or shall I forge ahead and try to become a Master of Python? I tried to learn TypeScript and React and I just can't get it. Out of necessity, I do code review for a project written with TypeScript, React, and Next.js at work, and I just can't help falling asleep because everything seems incomprehensible. I don't really know how to get better at any of this.

I have no idea how to spend my free time. I have over 1000 games on Steam, GOG, Epic Store, EA Origin combined, but I open my game library and don't even know what I want to play. I bought most of these games from Humble Bundle, mostly when the bundles come with soundtracks because I just know I won't really play the games. I just listen to the soundtracks while I work. My wife isn't a gamer and there's nobody to play with me. I also have hundreds of ebooks bought from Humble Bundle and Story Bundle, and again, I have no idea what do read.

Since even before the COVID-19 pandemic, I have deleted all my classmates and ex-coworkers from Facebook, except one friend and his wife because he's more like a big brother to me than just a friend. Nobody tried to reconnect with me, neither via Facebook, nor by e-mail, nor by giving me a call. I have no friend to talk to. I eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone during work days and I just spend time mindlessly wandering the streets and the malls until lunch time is up.

When I'm off work and get home, I take care of watching over the little one do her homework, I have supper and I do the dishes, and then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful.

For reasons that I would rather not say, I can't talk to my wife about my depression.

Disclaimer: I'm just a random person on the internet, but a lot of issues you wrote about ringed home to me. So below here is how I dealt with all of them. And in some cases, I'm simply offering a thing or two here, because I feel like you need some companionship (and since I have no clue on how to meet people during this pandemic, I'm doing it this way).

> I write Python but I never learned how to use the Python debugger.

I can show you my workflow. Feel free to email me.

I love debuggers.

> Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass.

I think a lot of us do. I came to accept that this is the way it is.

> I tried to learn TypeScript and React and I just can't get it.

I've learned enough React and TypeScript to have some insights into this. Self-learning this takes around 100 hours. This is how I did it:

- Read a book (e.g. Road to React) and code whatever the book says

- Then make a project on your own that is like the project of the book but not completely

- Now make a project (small) that is something different

You're now ready to code in actual React.

My route for this was:

1. Code whatever Road to React says

2. Make a favorites app. List your favorite websites and give it 1 to 5 stars.

3. My thesis (tbh convincing the academic board that a React project was scientific was as hard as the project itself :P). My thesis was an XML parser that feed to output to React components which would be rendered. Note: the XML language was academic and my claim was that there would be a 30% code reduction by using React, which was true as no parsing was needed anymore, you could use a webpack plugin.

> My wife isn't a gamer and there's nobody to play with me.

I've noticed that I only like and play games because my friends play them. And I then become quite competitive and practice that game over and over and over again. I always wondered why I was addicted to games, it was just a distorted way for my need for human contact.

With that said, feel free to email me to play Among Us. It's one of the few games that I allow myself to play (as long as I know someone who wants to play as well).

> eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone during work days

In my country it's quite easy to circumvent this as we have good bread, butter and peanutbutter (so I simply make that as a sandwich, super quick), throw in some tangerines and that's my "fastfood". Do you have similar ways of doing that?

> When I'm off work and get home, I take care of watching over the little one do her homework, I have supper and I do the dishes, and then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful.

For the past 6 months, I mostly worked 4 days per week instead of 5. The difference is massive. It sounds like your energy is being depleted too much for what you can handle right now.

Good idea to post an anonymous poll.

Ever since I experienced ego death in the wake of a mental breakdown, around five years ago, my mental health has improved a lot :).

> I spend most of my time mindlessly browsing HN or Reddit, eating whatever I find and sleeping late.

This sounds like my routine...

What you’ve described is indeed extremely stressful and emotionally exhausting. It sounds like an expected response! You could consider this the valley before climbing back up to not feeling this way.

Time helps - but it may take more than that. I would confide in friends if you have them, and consider talking with a professional...

I see what you mean. Still, I have had that happen to me once. It was just for 2 years, but I was still pretty surprised when she came home from visiting her adventist church, telling me she will move out. When I asked about the whys, she suddenly had a complete list of things which she couldn't stand anymore. However, she never tried to talk about any of them prior to this event. In fact, I even asked her a few months about one of the topic on her list, and she told me straight out it was fine with her. To be honest, I really should have sticked to my rule of not dating religious women. I still suspect her church mates had something to do with the sudden change in attitude. However, I never learnt what was really going on. Go figure.

The upside of such events, which has been mentioned by others already, is that you are now free to find the right person for you. Breakups, while sometimes being pretty emotional, are almost always for the better.