[neplus]

I would recommend the following video that may not provide explicit answers, but will perhaps provide a contextual understanding for how you're feeling.

Why Passivity Breeds Mediocrity and Mental Illness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUs6NDsMWVI

It sounds like you've slammed your new life full of ephemeral busywork to, well, keep yourself occupied. It also sounds like you don't have a professional network that relies on you and that you rely on (since you're financially independent and just poking around these days).

You may want to take a step back, enmesh yourself for a few weeks or months in all the possible paths you could focus yourself on (which will likely be chaotic and unenjoyable), and then just dedicate yourself to pursuing a given path. Try to build up a network, feel you are helping others in the network, and see where it all goes.

Whether this path ends up being financially fruitful or being conventionally successful along some other axis should be viewed as irrelevant given your current status. You'll likely find just having a thing to do, that other people are also working tangentially on or are interested in, will bring you all the success you need.

[adv0r]

Watched the video. I am definitely the kind of person he describes, and I agree with the diagnosis he makes about the human condition. I honestly don't think the cure he is suggesting is working, otherwise, I wouldn't be here. I am very very very far from being passive, indeed I (try to) fill (most of) my days with challenges and creative activities from which I get pride (cit.) pleasure, and make me feel alive. I've always lived this way, and it starts to feel like a "challenge addiction" that doesn't really take me anywhere long term. It makes me perpetually and intermittently unsatisfied so that I need to go find "the next thing" to create/do/work on, that will make the discomfort go away, and let me feel PRIDE. For 10 minutes. And then back to it... It's a hamster wheel, and it's the very reason I started this thread. I started to somehow look with envy at the "content people" which seem to get away with passive and superficial relaxing lives.

[imtringued]

It's hard to get the idea across.

Content = I am happy the way I am.

Not Content = I want to improve myself.

That's it. Being content is being passive by definition.

A lot of people don't want to be passive and that is perfectly okay.

[adv0r]

Ok, this is a very good reply and feedback. I am not even sure I am fully grasping it at the moment. I will get back after I watched the video. But it seems like you read between the lines pretty well.

>enmesh yourself for a few weeks or months in all the possible paths you could focus yourself on

Can you expand a bit on this? Maybe provide some examples...

Because sometimes with the "pocking around, keeping myself busy, ..." I do have the illusion I am exploring some paths. In a very shallow way