Ask HN: and now what?

I'm desperate.

I'm almost 38. Start programming at 10. Spent 7 years in video game industry as programmer, project manager, CTO. I tried during 5 years to create a "startup".

I still have a half time job that pay the bill and give me enough time to create something. During these 5 years I created a game, a tool for geeks, a B2B project and lot of more things. I created some projects alone, with CEO partners, CTO partners. Each time, I have no traction, negative feedback, I demotivating and then I stop the project. I read too much about pretotyping, MVP, lean startup, marketing.

Now I don't even know what to do. All ideas I have seems already made by someone else, and often better than I planned to do them. Each partners I meet seems too newbie to work with.

It's horrible because I have time and skills to do lot of things but nothing motivate me anymore. I think all those failures killed me and now I'm lost. What a waste.

If you have any advises, ways to help me, ideas, insult, whatever, shoot.

--- UPDATE: Thank you so much for your advises, I need to think about all this. I'll answer you one by one.

I'm on HN since 1400 days with a total of 42 karma point and never been on HN homepage. My anonymous account have more karam and on homepage in 30mn. What a pitty! but anyway, I'm not looking to be a star or for vanity metrics so it's not a problem.

Lot of people would love to enough money each month and free time to do whatever they want. It's a waste because I don't know what to do with this free time...

Everything is insipid for me. I have no hobby, no programming idea, no desire to meet people, travel whatever. When I try to get a hobby, I m fed up after a few try. When I go to nice tech event, I'm bored.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and get a full time job. You need to accept that you're not good enough to start your own company. It's okay, there are millions of people like you, like me and most people on HN.

Take a break, go on a vacation, and recharge your batteries. You have the skills to have a well-paid job, and a great life. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth just because you had a failed dream of being a millionaire through some startup. You can still have a great life from your skills, if you just step back and realize how lucky you are.

Take a six month break from everything.

Come back and kick ass.

Seems like you've been going at 110% for a long time. My recommendation: take a break. A month at least, and just explore passions that you never had the time for during your adventures. Build something fun (I like go-karts and mini bikes), read about something totally new and unrelated to programming (history, evolutionary psychology, fiction), and challenge yourself physically (strength training and endurance).

It's easy to get caught in the echo chamber of the Startup world. The reality is, it is very hard to strike it rich in any industry. That doesn't mean we should stop trying, but just try to enjoy your life along the way by diversifying your time investment portfolio. That means that even if every attempt you make fails, you still enjoy the journey.

So go out there and have some fun. Don't worry, there will be plenty of opportunities for startups when you return.

It sounds to me that you are burned out/living on thin energy/emotional margins, you don't know enough people, and you are following idea groupthink so you don't really believe in what you come up with.

I think that all of these problems will be solved by working a good full-time job for a couple years while writing an interesting blog and promoting it. You'll recover your energy and confidence. You'll be working through your thoughts, finding your voice and grappling with ideas every time you write. You'll be connected to people who share your interests, and who will give you strong feedback on/insight into your ways of doing things without your having to build a whole company first. And eventually, you'll intersect a great idea with the right person/people and be ready mentally and physically, and things will seem much different than they were in your last go-around. Hope this helps.