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My dad stacked boxes of pickles for 30 years. I don't remember him complaining about work to my mom, or to us. I don't think he even ever looked for another job. He just went to work and came home at the end of the day.
- read stoicism, start anywhere, keep reading
- check in with a counselor
- consider your relationship with "god" -- is it fake? Step up or step back.
- get a hobby; here are mine: real estate, woodworking, software projects, private pilot, ham radio
You could try having an affair, and try to keep it from your wife. That will spice things up! I mean, you'll lose everything if you get caught, but what a rush!
It will spice things up for literally a few minutes and then you’ll be even more depressed once your time is over.
1. body - food, water, shelter, sleep. check 2. safety - freedom, stability. check 3. love and belonging: friends & family. check 4. self realization: prestige, respect, achievements.. ???? that's your next step. 5. the dream: full complete realization of ones potential.
read up on this thing, check it out.
also maybe useful questions to ask:
1. how is my last month going to look like - how do I wanna die. invision it. 2. maybe think. what would you do if you only had week, month, year to live? maybe go do it? is it realy impossibly to do while paying mortgage? chances are it isnt.
also, maybe list things you like about yourself and things you dont like. wanna work on those you dont like?
There have been a lot of post floating around the internet with various solutions, the most popular being Stoicism > Positive Psychology / Happiness research > Buddhism / Meditation. I've dabbled a little in all of them and they all have something to offer.
Essentially, you are experiencing a disconnect between how it feels to be you and how you expected to feel. As someone only a little older than yourself, I would say this: your job will never love you back, and especially in the software realm, it may not be as fulfilling as something like woodworking or therapy. It does pay the bills, though.
The above mentioned happiness research / positive psychology suggests that having multiple, meaningful social roles that you can fulfill outside of work will allow you to shoulder more responsibility and find meaning in your life.
What I'm trying say is that in the second half of life, it is our job to give back. So start there.
Also, this is in my morning bookmarks to revisit: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/so6e8h/engine...
The most satisfying job I had as an software engineer had me working side by side with other amazing engineers, the types of people who have Wikipedia articles about the stuff they've accomplished in life.
Plenty of people work jobs earning less $ if they have an amazing group of people to work with. Sitting side by side with someone who is a catalyst for brilliance is worth a lot, because it adds a lot to your level of personal fulfillment.
> I work from home. My job is technically interesting, and I still learn/improve.
How much do you improve? How hard have you stretched yourself? I've worked with people who made me go far beyond what I thought I could ever do. That was technically interesting. Learning how to read clock diagrams and calculate memory access latencies to see if my algorithms could even run, that was technically interesting.
Working until 11pm at night listening to metal music sitting side by side with another engineer as we tried to write gesture recognition algorithms on a capacitive touch sensor that only had 6 pads (lol), that was interesting (and frustrating).
Do I enjoy my 9-5 now? Sure. But it isn't satisfying. Pushing the industry forward is satisfying. Building foundational technologies is satisfying. Fighting tooth and nail to make technology do the impossible, that is satisfying.