I sympathize 1000%.

The last 20 years have been very hard on me as a software developer and environmentally/politically conscious person. I've watched just about everything not work out the way I had hoped for. I believe that we've hit an inflection point where enough people have realized that the emperor has no clothes that we have a real chance to start over and correct our course.

I don't know how to help with your specific situation, but I can share mine. I went to college from 1995-1999 and it was similar to movies like PCU, Hackers, Dazed and Confused. I got to watch the internet go mainstream, which I wouldn't trade for anything. Anyone could make money then doing web development, and I was working on a shareware game business. It was just such an alive time, vivid in my memory. The future was so bright we had to wear shades.

Then the DMCA. The Dot Bomb. Bush v. Gore. 9/11. The PATRIOT Act. Middle East wars. Who Killed the Electric Car. The death of research. Outsourcing. Privatization. 100,000 US factories closed. The student loan crisis/bankruptcy exception. The housing bubble. Underemployment. Wealth inequality. Clinton-Trump. COVID-19. Billionaires..

In the hangover of the early 2000s, I felt guilty for partying it up in the 90s and ended up moving furniture for 3 years to support my floundering shareware business. Which shook my faith in humanity and almost broke me. Then a good friend passed which gave me PTSD. I was in financial ruin by the 2010s. Worked a bunch of dead end jobs under continuous burnout and depression to survive. Almost found myself homeless a few times. I continued self-flagellating all the way until the 2020 pandemic, when finally the whole world seemed to break too.

Now a lot of people landed on either side of these issues and hundreds more. Half the people reading this won't share my context or conclusions. But as a whole, I feel that the last 20 years have been a textbook example of what not to do. They're the dying gasp of 20th century thinking. For a long time, I felt that they ruined my life.

But all trauma all the time is no way to live one's life.

I've been going through a healing and growth process due to some health issues, a spiritual awakening and a dark night of the soul.

Now I see:

Faith, hope and love. Service to others. The divinity of all living things. Communication. Boundaries. Mindfulness. Meditation. A forgiving and supportive inner monologue. Showing up for yourself so that you can show up for others.

I have my sights set on solarpunk, decommodification, basically lengthening my runway outside of the status quo because I no longer believe that tech as we conceive it now serves the human condition. Somewhat ironically, we've become slaves to idiology and dogma under this secular system.

My current approach looks like listening for anxiety when I'm troubled by a choice, and leaning into the choice that expands possibility. So many of our choices each day are in conflict with what we feel is our life's purpose. But I've found that when I make the choice aligned with my heart, reality reforms around me to support it. Now I look back and see that much of my suffering was due to my own attachments, that I held on too tightly and dwelled on the negative, and didn't see the miracle of life unfolding. I didn't know that we had the power to manifest our dreams.

When in doubt, it's good to turn attention from doing to listening for a calling. That's where I found my faith again.

It's been a hard two decades, I still get overwhelmed and exhausted sometimes, but I truly feel optimism for the future in spite of everything looming over us and the planet. Hope something in this helps you give yourself the permission we all deserve, to start over again and be here now in this moment together.