> I think I might be below your threshold, though.

No. At least for a huge fraction of the available jobs. What you have said, plus the very fact you are on this site, makes this almost certain. You need to realize what "incompetence" really looks like, and how bad many developers really are. I'm talking "copy and paste code from StackOverflow", "take 3 weeks to parse a simple file format", "how do I load a MySQL dump" level of incompetence. I have seen all these things.

> i don't know what i could make that people would want in the dozens or hundreds.

Make something that scratches an itch you have, that nothing else (good) exists to solve, then generalize it and write clear documentation so it will be useful to others. A hint: the main factors I use before deciding whether to bother with a GitHub codebase are: 1) the quality of documentation and 2) the frequency of updates. These two things indicate that someone cares about the code and is likely to continue supporting it. Think of this as a test of your ability to identify and solve important problems. It is far from necessary to have a popular codebase to get a good job, but if you do, you will have no problems at all.

> i'm distantly aware that i'm whining. the past couple of months have been bad. in the past week i think i may have had a solid psychotic break.

Consider seeing a psychiatrist (not a regular MD) who specializes in depression and/or adult ADHD. My work improved significantly when I was diagnosed with mild depression and ADHD and was medicated for it. This will not be a panacea: you will have the same problems, but will be better equipped to cope with them. IANAMD, but it seems quite unlikely you are actually psychotic. However, deep depression combined with a bad life situation can combine to make your mind do very strange things.

Realize that you are not alone, this happens to many people, and instead of a negative feedback loop of depression and failure, you can get into a positive feedback loop of confidence and success. Your fortunes can change surprisingly quickly if you take the proper steps, and you are very much on the right track. The biggest problem with depression is that it makes it difficult to take steps to fix it, but you are tackling that.

A final word on dealing with psychiatrists, though, if you choose to go that route. Do research, decide what condition(s) you likely have, and then present the psychiatrist with the relevant facts to help guide them to the proper conclusion. Also, if you are having suicidal thoughts, I would not recommend you mention them. This has ended very badly for people I know. A psychiatrist would be horrified at this advice, but the fact is that psychiatrists are busy, and will jump to conclusions based on very little data unless you are informed and help them along.

EDIT: One final small thing. Keeping with the theme of communication, I would suggest that whenever you're writing anything -- an e-mail, a HN comment, whatever, you always use proper spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc. (unless it's to close friends). Don't be a pedant, but these basics mark you as an intelligent person who considers their thoughts carefully. Notice how all the top HN commenters do this here, even though this isn't a formal venue. This isn't a coincidence: people will automatically give words more weight if they seem to come from someone who thought them through. Although proper grammar doesn't guarantee this, using informal grammar definitely makes a bad impression.