> How do you cope with that? Seeing your future as an underachiever pains you. What do you do?
For myself? I work out what I want to achieve and go work on it. There are several problems I'm interested in at the moment: visual IDEs and complexity, computer aided research planning, local-proxy based encryption, sousveillance as a peer to peer service...
Do I have a job in any of these areas? Well, yeah, one. But that's besides the point - I don't stop working on the others because I don't get paid for them, I just tinker at home. If I lost my job on the one I'm working on at the moment I wouldn't be in a 'The world is over, can't work on what I love.' position, I'd just find someone else to pay me to work on something that interests me.
I feel like you're maybe feeling lost because you want to work on great things but don't know what those are. Might be wrong? The worry there is that great things isn't a thing you can steer towards, it's a magnitude - and in so far as that magnitude lines up with someone's values it's an opinion. You could almost call the want to work on great things an expression of longing for a goal.
So:
What interests you? What problems keep you up at night? What has hurt you in your life? What might you like to help others with? What have you enjoyed and would like to see more of in the world?
What are your current strengths? How well do those fit addressing the earlier problems? What do you have to do to make them fit better?
I feel like sitting down for a few hours with a sheet of paper and answering those sorts of questions might make you feel a bit better. Even if you can't think how to steer A towards B immediately, you at least have a starting point to begin looking into what you'd need then.
For myself? I work out what I want to achieve and go work on it. There are several problems I'm interested in at the moment: visual IDEs and complexity, computer aided research planning, local-proxy based encryption, sousveillance as a peer to peer service...
Do I have a job in any of these areas? Well, yeah, one. But that's besides the point - I don't stop working on the others because I don't get paid for them, I just tinker at home. If I lost my job on the one I'm working on at the moment I wouldn't be in a 'The world is over, can't work on what I love.' position, I'd just find someone else to pay me to work on something that interests me.
I feel like you're maybe feeling lost because you want to work on great things but don't know what those are. Might be wrong? The worry there is that great things isn't a thing you can steer towards, it's a magnitude - and in so far as that magnitude lines up with someone's values it's an opinion. You could almost call the want to work on great things an expression of longing for a goal.
So:
What interests you? What problems keep you up at night? What has hurt you in your life? What might you like to help others with? What have you enjoyed and would like to see more of in the world?
What are your current strengths? How well do those fit addressing the earlier problems? What do you have to do to make them fit better?
I feel like sitting down for a few hours with a sheet of paper and answering those sorts of questions might make you feel a bit better. Even if you can't think how to steer A towards B immediately, you at least have a starting point to begin looking into what you'd need then.