Ask HN: Are you depressed?

I think you're already in a pretty good place - the fact you have healthy relationships, a good job and you regularly exercise is very very important. And yet, something is still off by your account. Fatigue, agitation, loneliness. It's not entirely clear to me why you get these fits of agitation, loneliness etc. A lot of depressed people feel down about themselves - they feel like they're worthless, no good, a failure etc. You don't see yourself that way - which is good, but it also calls for more exploration into your predicament. The fact you're kinda already doing everything right (sports, relationships etc) is a sign you may do need external help as you yourself said. An obvious thing that may be lacking by your account is a signifcant other, but in itself is not gonna be a cure for depression.

For me work has been very stressful, though I'm better off than most people, the pandemic did not affect me very much but I find work very toxic. I'm a very young software engineer at 23 in a country where most engineers you will find are 26 and above I got my first full time developer job when I was 19 fresh out of high school.

Most people consider me as smart but I'm not given the opportunity to use my skills. In late 2019 I had decided to resign my current job because I found it too toxic, I had been diagnosed with bipolar and things had been very hard before I had decided to go and see a therapist who when immediately saw me referred me to a psychiatrist and I've been on medication since then.

My manager convinced me to stay and offered me a small increase in salary and promised me that my voice will be heard. He also convinced me to take a contract that involved completing an app that I had been working on. he made a lot of promises to me. As soon as I accepted his new offer and rejoined the company, he changed again, I'm still faced with the issues I used face previously and as someone with bipolar, I get stressed easily and the company does not make it any easy for me. Last week I just decided to send my manager a notification about my planned exit next year. He's trying to convince me to continue staying... So I'm just wondering why s would someone want you to stay in a company without giving you the opportunity for growth? For me it feels like they just want to use me to do the hard work and then "The right people will take the credit", considering I don't have a university degree.

Are other young engineers who are talented face similar issues in other companies? Despite my age, I've been working with computers longer than most people around me. So I do know a lot and can easily do any task. A lot of people are just usually concerned with how do I know what I know? Most of the time people don't listen to me and when things go wrong or something is very technical they always want me to be the one to do that but I get no credit. Maybe I'm the problem. Is there something about me that makes it hard to be acceptable to these people?

I recommend reading "To Have or to Be" by Erich Fromm. Great book that deals exactly with these types of questions.

Never been better, personally.

I'm used to travelling a lot, I've been doing it since I was a wee baby thanks to my very international family, so it's been a very strange thing to be constrained to a single country for so long. Ignoring that though, I've been doing quite well. I was always a freelancer, so my job didn't really suffer much, I'm pretty much working exactly as much as I used to. My friend circle is all similarly international people, and we've grown accustomed to not seeing each other for months, sometimes years at a time so this is just another one of those periods for most of us. Since getting out of the house is a bit of a hassle, I mostly just do yard work now, it's very calming. Not much has changed, other than the inability of flying whenever I pleased like before, but I'm hopeful that those travel restrictions will loosen relatively soon, and once that happens I'm pretty much back where I started, which is a good place.

> "Not making a political statement with that"

Negating something also 'somewhat' implies the opposite (the not negated version). Also you add a smiley ":)" in the paragraph before, which drops a very clear hint.

I can say with certainty close to 100% that you are a strong Biden supporter and fan.

I am happy for you that politics fixed your depression.