Find Meaning at Work
What about finding meaning outside of work? Your career doesn&#x27;t have to be the (only) focus of your life.<p>Maybe try something new once or twice a month. Check out your local meetups, visit museums or art galleries, read books of a different genre, go to random cultural events in your local newspaper, invite some friends to karaoke, plan a long backpacking trip, talk to new people, take classes at your local community college... keep exploring until you find yourself either passionate about something new, or maybe you&#x27;ve met more interesting people who provide fulfilling relationships, or at the very least you find yourself too distracted and busy with random shit to be depressed.<p>Also, on a personal&#x2F;emotional level... maybe it would help to learn peaceful acceptance in addition to the ceaseless pursuit of hedonism? You can burn out on excitement and adrenaline too, and learning to be ok in the in-between moments, when things aren&#x27;t great or terrible but ust OK, is a useful life skill in and of itself. &quot;This too will pass&quot; -- both the good and the bad.<p>I mean, really, let&#x27;s face it, tech bros aren&#x27;t generally known for being happy, well-balanced people... and if you fit that stereotype, well, it&#x27;s in your power to branch out and start to absorb other personas into your life. It&#x27;s not really &quot;faking it until you make it&quot;, IMO, more like &quot;trying new roles on until you find one, or a combination of several, that fit you&quot;.<p>Oh! Also, maybe exercise more and eat better if you&#x27;re not already doing that... a LOT of our mood is just controlled by microbes and hormones and shit, not necessarily anything going on in the conscious mind that you can actively re-imagine.<p>Branch out, find other good things in life, then when you feel ready, you can always circle back and adjust your work to better suit your newfound interests and networks, maybe doing software for some other vertical you find more interesting than pure tech or moving to a different career altogether.<p>As a SRE you have waaaaaay more ability to tweak your life than most people (because you can financially afford to explore things), might as well make use of it! Especially while you&#x27;re childless and (presumably, it&#x27;s not clear from your post) &quot;relatively&quot; single.<p>If so, your 30s could be a golden age for you... you have (hopefully) the maturity to be able to take big risks for yourself, the financial wherewithal to chase at least some of your dreams, relative good health, and unburdened by Big Life Things like kids, marriages, divorces, mortgages, retirement, whatever. Just take it easy and keep looking instead of doubling-down on a dead-end tech job.<p>At the end of your life you won&#x27;t care how many lines of code you&#x27;ve written or how big your bank account got. Nobody will. Stop chasing empty dreams of &quot;success&quot; defined by a ruthless ultracapitalist society and find your own meaning!