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I'm disturbed by how much of myself I saw in this. Cutting off all contact with friends in order to work on my project without distraction. During my day job I space out fantasizing about re-emerging into society as a successful entrepreneur. And I've picked up an adderall habit to facilitate binge programming on the weekends.
Interesting read, though I just have one minor complaint about your style of writing... Foot notes after every 3-5 paragraphs is somewhat jarring and hampers the flow of reading your story. I suggest moving all of the foot notes to the bottom of the post and let the reader read them if they want to. Just my $0.02.
I have a logistical question: how/what do you eat?
Several points bothered me in this story, as it was a combination of honest observations and immature conclusions.
1) Life takes time, you need to be at peace with being young and not having all the solutions.
2) The author seems to suffer from observing the image of Silicon Valley success without actually experiencing it.
Most people fail, most projects go unfinished, most beyond that never make enough money to sustain a company.
A successful product is the evolutionary result of 10,000 products before it that failed, went unfinished, or were unprofitable. Even the best of the Valley didn't sit down, bang out some brilliant code, slap a business strategy on top, then cash a billion dollar check. They worked long and hard through repeated failures, with sometimes B and C squad talent, slowly carving away at the block of ideas until a product appeared. Then after that, they spend months or years compiling a business strategy and altering the product to become palatable to enough customers to gain a profit.
It takes a team of imperfect people and a lot of time to make even a passable product. Even finishing a unprofitable product is an massive achievement in itself.
It worries me at the end that the author again seems to come to a single conclusion that he believes will bring both success and happiness. That may never come, or it may be that the author never makes a lot of money or never is the best in the field.
This was the most painful part of growing up for me -- accepting that you live in a sea of talented individuals, and you are in no way, the most talented among them. You learn to reach out, form a team, and that great things come from hard work and diligence as much or more so than from natural talent.
Huge amount of people go through similar experiences to yours. Others start to lapse into an experience like yours and get scared - they go the other way and try to force social behavior on themselves, often becoming bullies or the kid you mentioned who hurt himself trying to show off to you.
So my advice (since you're obviously not posting something publicly and expecting to get away without advice shoved at you) - stop worrying about 'normal'. Stop trying to fit in or not fit in. There are no points to be won by having social interactions. Social interactions are so you can learn, experience and enjoy. Approach them like this, and walk away when it's not working and try again. Everyone is doing the same thing, social interactions are breaking everywhere, you just don't see it so much from a distance because people cling to the precious few social interactions which have actually worked for them.
Since you're trying to put things in terms of programming: if your program doesn't work/is slow because you're looping over the wrong thing, try again with a different loop, try a different data structure. You don't need to avoid 'if' loops in the future because they didn't work once. You don't need to keep trying to use an 'if' loop because its 'normal to use an if loop'. Excuse the terrible metaphor.
I used to keep a diary, where 13 years ago my entries were long monologues similar to this. There was a clear correlation between amount of personal and emotional human contact I had in a day and the length of the diary entries where I tried to reminisce going mushroom picking with my grandmother a decade earlier.
The world today seems too constantly distracting for that sort of thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to put this in all caps because you are not paying my day rate: YOU ARE AN ABUSE SURVIVOR. Find professional help (NOW) to starting approaching it and dealing with it. Find professional help (NOW) to help manage your mental disorder (depression) which carries an enormous and present risk of self-harm. Get whatever the fuck is wrong with your foot fixed, and start walking out the door on the regular. You app…
> ...now be the best person in other people's lives. ...Why? I've spent most of the last ten years trying to do just that. Do you know what it has gotten me? Let me tell you what it has gotten me: friends and family that never call unless they need something; an utterly depleted bank account; a complete lack of respect or even human regard from my peers; a pile of strife and struggle and pain and misery and not one s…
Yes, many shrinks suck. It sucks dealing with them. I'll still shout "Find professional help" if that's what it'll take for that person. And that's the case here.
You(OP) don't go and write a whole long screed how you'd like to be left alone to then justify said screed on a site like HN without actually, at some level, wanting to interact with people.
Which means you(OP) have an issue - what you(OP) say and what you do is not congruent. Find somebody you can relate to, and ask for their advice. Doesn't need to be a shrink. Priest, Guru, Life Coach, whatever works for you. Work out which one of the two you want, and then live accordingly.
Edit: Clarifying "you"