Ask HN: Are you depressed?
I&#x27;m depressed, anxious, and lost.<p>I&#x27;m 38, married, and I have two daughters.<p>My career seems to be stuck. I work in IT, but I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m actually very good in any specific aspect of it. I suck at debugging. I write Python but I never learned how to use the Python debugger. I&#x27;m no good at project management either. Every time I&#x27;m asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I&#x27;m pulling a random number out of my ass. It&#x27;s even worse when I&#x27;m asked to make long term planning with a Gantt chart. I don&#x27;t know how to advance my career. I don&#x27;t know whether I want to pursue a technical path or a (project) management path. Just in terms of programming languages, there are so many out there that I don&#x27;t know, but that I think I <i>should</i> know - e.g. rust, haskell, elixir, clojure, kotlin - and I&#x27;m anxious of missing out. Or shall I forge ahead and try to become a Master of Python? I tried to learn TypeScript and React and I just can&#x27;t get it. Out of necessity, I do code review for a project written with TypeScript, React, and Next.js at work, and I just can&#x27;t help falling asleep because everything seems incomprehensible. I don&#x27;t really know how to get better at any of this.<p>I have no idea how to spend my free time. I have over 1000 games on Steam, GOG, Epic Store, EA Origin combined, but I open my game library and don&#x27;t even know what I want to play. I bought most of these games from Humble Bundle, mostly when the bundles come with soundtracks because I just know I won&#x27;t really play the games. I just listen to the soundtracks while I work. My wife isn&#x27;t a gamer and there&#x27;s nobody to play with me. I also have hundreds of ebooks bought from Humble Bundle and Story Bundle, and again, I have no idea what do read.<p>Since even before the COVID-19 pandemic, I have deleted all my classmates and ex-coworkers from Facebook, except one friend and his wife because he&#x27;s more like a big brother to me than just a friend. Nobody tried to reconnect with me, neither via Facebook, nor by e-mail, nor by giving me a call. I have no friend to talk to. I eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone during work days and I just spend time mindlessly wandering the streets and the malls until lunch time is up.<p>When I&#x27;m off work and get home, I take care of watching over the little one do her homework, I have supper and I do the dishes, and then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful.<p>For reasons that I would rather not say, I can&#x27;t talk to my wife about my depression.