Yes, I do have some experience with this.

At the age of 33 I thought that my life was a complete mistake. The evidence was clear: despite a start as a brilliant child prodigy, I had history of depression and self-isolation. I didn't got to a great university, just a glorified community college. In the doldrums of 2003-4 I was applying for work slinging PHP at local used car websites and not even getting those jobs.

I was sick of trying. So I decided to just... give up, and see what happened.

I had this feeling that regular society wasn't for me - that all I could do was to be a homeless drifter. So I gave up looking for work, and just waited for my rent and other expenses to deplete the last few hundred dollars.

So then I had nothing to do. No obligations. No jobs to apply for. No need to compete with my ex-colleagues.

With nothing better to do I decided to hack on a few things that amused me. We're talking tiny little scripts here, in weird, obscure areas. And then I posted them online. And then, they got some attention, for being weird and different. And then my phone was ringing with calls from recruiters. And a few months after my plan to become a homeless person was set in motion, I was filling out my orientation forms at a campus in Silicon Valley.

You may be discounting my story as a fluke. And I got super lucky. But you can also see how flawed my thinking was. And maybe your thinking is similarly flawed.

I thought I had nothing to offer, and yet I was a reasonably well-educated person, with a great deal of knowledge, and a certain measure of creativity and even passion for certain topics. And I bet you're the same way. If you're on Hacker News you probably know something about something. Are you sure you aren't blocking yourself?

The reason we get blocked is that we compare ourselves to others. Google "growth mindset" versus "fixed mindset". Too many of us are taught "fixed mindset" - you are smarter, therefore you are better. If you are sucking at something, it's because you are inferior. This is such a painful conclusion, you start to numb down your emotions to deal with it. Which is why your brain probably feels fogged, and why it's doubly hard to climb out of this state.

Your post is dripping with fixed-mindset thinking. According to you, learning new skills is impossible, or will take too long, or isn't worth it. Why? You aren't saying that you can't learn this stuff. You aren't saying you can't have a good career. You're saying it's not worth it because others will be further along. Think about this. It is not rational. You will have nothing if you don't learn new skills (or at least change what you're doing).

Furthermore, in today's market, it is not a matter of being the best in one thing. It's about finding your unique niche. By utter luck, I stumbled into doing that for myself. I'm not the best in X or Y or Z but I am among the best, or at least employable, in people who do X+Y+Z.

My motivation was despair, which freed me from having to compete, and let my natural inclinations take over. But on the whole, rather than despair, I recommend joy. ;) Looking for what's fun will put you on a better path. You'll home right in on what you're supposed to be doing. I guarantee it.

It will be hard to get to that space. You are depressed and have accumulated bad habits from a lifetime of fixed-mindset thinking. And this is fucking with your rationality, no matter what it seems. One way to fix your thinking is cognitive-behavioral therapy. See if you can find a professional in your area.