Wow - could me me except that you have done much more than I. I like reading HN but feel very peripheral to the main current. Read your post and related alot more than I do with most. Thank you for the honesty and directness.

Trying to get by with a single income (wife and 2 young kids) in an expensive metro area. In a job which I like because it has been my first job working in an almost purely Linux sysadmin - but with difficulties not to enumerate as I am using my real name... For various reasons, there is nowhere for me to go in the company, the jobmarket keeps me in place and reinforces the slavish notion that I am lucky to even have a job.

The things that motivate me at this point are embarrassingly simple. On the train this morning, I figured out how to run SLIME and worked through the examples in PG's short "History of Lisp". It made me happy because I had been reding about LISP and related things for some time on HN and other places but had no idea for a while how to start investigating the subject. Such initiatives do not have much legs because I get drawn into everyday responsibilities and the (hopefully) minor crises that come with having small children.

These trivial discoveries make me happy in the short term and I muddle though. Long term thinking fills me with dread.

I know I have started this all late in life - sometimes it feels too late.

Anyway to reiterate - I can say that I empathize in a minor way as I have not achieved a fraction of what you have. What follows is a personal reaction.

In what feels like another life, I was a grad student in literature. Your post reminded me of 3 things that I had read over the years. Not so much the pieces themselves but a situation described. Your post is full of frustration and dread. The accumulation of energy before a lightning strike. I would love to convey this too you as the energy in your post makes me feel like you might be closer to a solution than you think. My attempt:

A bit of critique (not criticism mind you) - look at the 2 questions in the 2nd to last paragraph.

The contrast in the questions made me think of a mistake endemic to our time - one that great and small minds make. A movement from the concrete to the abstract. A movement from within to without. What Blake refers to as a 'roofed horror'

The question:

"Where should I turn..." reminded me of the first piece of literature- have you read any DesCartes? If you are interested in the History of Science read his early life and an event known as the dream in the 'poele'. The same question occurred to him (in Latin).

The next question "And what would you do?" is a detour.

A natural one because the way seems blind and a deadend. And this (HN) is a community of people who likely understand where this question is coming from better than most. But the answer is not here or anywhere external.

Looking at your brief eloquent post this is a point at which you probably have to turn within.

The last paragraph is abstract where the previous ones are personal and direct. And of course it is a valid answer but the impetus is reactive and negative. By negative I do not mean 'wrong' or misguided. I mean in the sense that it is defined as against something else. The "something new" that is NOT your current life and does NOT involve yr difficult boss.

But to break free in a meaningful way this has to be transcended. 2nd piece of literature - the introduction to Hegel's "Phaenomenology of Geist". Negation is a moment in the process. Acorn --> tree. Lightning revealing a crumbling structure at the moment of its collapse.

And 3rd TS Eliot's WasteLand. Part 3 or 4. "What the thunder said". Images from an Sanskrit text. World in a drought, groups of people gather and pray to discover the reasons for the drought. A terrific thunderclap which each group hears as a different word. That word is a key.

Hopefully this does not sound too hokey.

I wish you the best.