I'm with you. I was unemployed through most of 2020, due partially to the corruption at the highest levels of a company I was working for in 2019 (you've heard of them) and then due to the response many companies had during the initial days of the pandemic to stop hiring and circle the wagons. I was left with a lot of free time on my hands, during which I began questioning everything.
I think I'm on the other side of all that now. I don't have "one thing" I have three, and I think it;s the same three things every person wants:
* To be well loved
* To be well fed
* To be well rested
All of the complicated things we're told we should want fall into those three buckets. We want a good job that pays well so we can not worry about where our next meal will come from (well fed), nor where we will sleep for the night (well rested). We want to buy things or do things to impress other people and gain their attention (to be well loved).
All of these are easily hacked by moneyed interests who turn your simple needs into a complex arrangement that makes them richer on your efforts. The system we live in is designed explicitly this way, and the people at the top continue to pass laws and policies and set social expectations through their control of mass media to keep this system in place because it benefits them. It sounds wildly conspiratorial, but it's also obviously and provably 100% true, even if the perpetrators themselves don't believe it - and I would argue many think they are actually doing the right thing while conveniently ignoring the damage they cause.
So my new primary goal is to focus my efforts not on improving the lives of some faceless investors who already have more money than anyone needs, and to instead focus my efforts on the people who matter - myself and the communities that support me and which I support in kind. This means my family, my neighbors, and the people in my city - "the people that we meet each day" - must become a higher priority for my attention and actions. But it also means supporting other communities - like the developer community, the open source community, and the gardening community, etc. - that I gain value from.
Ultimately, it all leads to taking control of my life in a way that sees me selecting who and what I interact with based on my values and how these communities support one another. I no longer trust companies to take proper care of their employees - they are all focused on getting the most work for the lowest cost and passing the difference as profit to investors who add zero value to the company. But you can't operate in this messed up system without money, so I still need to sell my time to people. Instead, I consult for a few companies at a time for an agreed-upon sum up front. I'm fortunate to be in a position to have knowledge and experience that these companies are willing to pay such a premium for, but I designed my career that way so... it was somewhat expected.
I'm still struggling with the sense that I "must work for 8 hours a day" and "be at my desk to be responsive to my supervisors". I've only been doing this for a year and that's still a struggle. But I do find the time to go out and work in my garden every day while the sun is still shining. My son's school has degraded to a point where I no longer see the value in his attendance there (they keep cutting things to the bone) so we'll be returning to homeschooling in the fall. This time around, though, I will be able to be more involved instead of relying on my poor wife to handle the load on her own while I gallivant across the globe for my job. My plan is to set aside two hours a day for one on one instruction with my son on a variety of topics, to try and reignite a love of learning in him that has been all but extinguished by academic bureaucracy.
I can't change the world. But I can change my world.