‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

"It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others." -- "Mistakes" demotivator, Despair.com

That yawning void in your soul that constantly whispers to you, "your life is meaningless, and nothing you do matters"? That's exactly what connects you with every other human that has ever lived. Most people who start to notice it just cover it up with a concert poster, or a salacious pin-up, or a photo of a sailboat, or a religious icon, just to avoid looking into it, and hearing it, and having all vitality and joy drain away through it.

But it's still there. It's not wrong. Your life really is meaningless, and nothing you do matters.

"Man is born. Man lives. Man dies. And it's all vanity." -- "Thrills", Cake

There is nothing about your life that had enough inherent value to waste. It just is what it was, the sum of all you were before. And it won't be exactly what you wanted it to be, because of entropy and psychology. You can spackle over the hole with anything that comes to hand, and desperately try to forget it's there, or you can let it remain, droning that high-pitched whine, from all the substance in your life getting sucked out into its vacuum.

A lot of what people do is, in essence, lying to each other, to save one another from that existential torment. Listen to a song on the radio? That's 3 minutes you can't hear the Hole. Watch a movie? That's 90 minutes of not staring into the Hole. Raise a kid? Heck, that's good for almost 20 years. Your Hole isn't any bigger than anyone else's. It has exactly the same amount of nothing in it. No matter what you pour into it, you're never going to fill it up--alcohol, drugs, sex, religion, entertainment, politics; they all get swallowed up in the end. If you accept that it will always be there, no matter what you do, you can slowly acclimate yourself to it. Try it on for size. Tell yourself: "I'm going to die, and everything I am will one day be forgotten."

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." -- "Ozymandias", PB Shelley

So what's the point of living? Why don't we just lie down and never get up again? Why don't we lose ourselves in endless pursuit of cheap thrills and chemical highs? Because that's against the rules of the LARP game many of us play called "Being Grown-Ass Adults in the Real World". Some people do quit, and stop following the rules, and that's their choice. If you want your life to be yours, you'll just have to come up with your own purpose for it. No one is scoring points for being more noble or more visionary. You won't get judged by anyone or anything that matters for aiming too low, or not making enough progress on any given day.

Even if you don't come up with a purpose right away, you can still go through the motions of survival until you do. If you live another day, that still makes you just as good as any other animal. The cat gets it. Suck up to the human just a little bit, and they'll give you food and take away your poop. Suck up to the employer just a little bit, and they'll give you money to buy food and toilet service. If you can love your cat for doing nothing at all you consider important, some other human can certainly love you for the same level of accomplishment. (That is, if being loved is something you actually want.)

You don't have to be what other people want you to be. You don't even have to be what the person you used to be wanted to become. You don't have to live a life of greatness. You don't have to live a life devoid of meaning. The rules only apply to you if you want to play. Nobody else can be you but you, so you might as well get started.

Remember the magic 18-35 demographic? Think about what would happen if the advertising industry could, say, move that out 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? (50 is the new 30!!!).

I'm convinced, either by design or the simple aftereffect of youth worship in America that is what is happening. Consumerism lulls you into a life of minute distractions in empty things, and prevents you from reflecting and appreciating long term / difficult things. AKA having kids.

For men, well, they can sire children pretty late, with some side effects of slight increases to defect rates.

Women? The march of time is brutal on the eggs.

If you attend a new event like a church group, don't really get involved in any conversations or the ones you have go really poorly or awkwardly, and then end up sitting a table by yourself, it might actually build its own momentum and make people feel more awkward if five weeks later after coming 4 times and just sitting by yourself you try again and try to join a group conversation. It feels very weird to them because at that point they've already categorized you mentally as 'weird guy' or they mentally feel awkward when you join. First impressions matter a lot. As do a lot of the tropey dating advice about confidence, friendliness, conversational skills, etc.

And at that point, you really can't expect people to approach you if you come in and sit alone.

It's honestly better if when you join a new environment like that, you join a big circle of people, try to portray confidence, introduce yourself, try to hang back in the conversation a bit but contribute a little here and there - importantly, not just saying nothing at all or people might start getting weirded out. Maybe when you join these conversations you aren't smiling and being friendly enough. Maybe you don't know how to show people that you care about they have to say or they don't feel like you are interested in them.

Perhaps you haven't learned yet what's 'awkward' and what is not.

I have experienced the 'I may as well be invisible thing' many many times, but I can always trace back how things got there, because I can tell when someone has become awkward, and I usually kind of know why things got awkward. I might say something stupid or weird people out accidentally - but I'll at least be able to tell when I've done that.

Can you tell when things have suddenly become a failure? Or it's a mystery all the way through?

Another thing you could try to is to find some examples of socially successful people in media and try to emulate them. Act like them. Speak like them. See if communicating like they do leads you to better outcomes. And then learn to identify what those 'characters' are doing differently than the normal you.

You may also try a dating coach, but instead of having them help you with dating, you go to events with them joining you and join these group conversations, and afterwards have them debrief you on what to do differently.