[username90]

> am I doomed to being miserable forever unless I become self-employed?

Yes. I'm like you, and even after getting a position where I had basically total freedom to work on fun experimental topics on my own with no deadlines I still couldn't be happy. Even after years I had strong depression attacks thinking about work. So I realized I'd never be happy in a corporate job, and then worked towards not needing to work for others.

I figured I could code games in more complicated genres. There really aren't that many such games out there since most people wanting to make games just focus on technically easy genres like platformers, shooters, horror, puzzle games, jrpg etc, so it isn't that hard to make money. And you don't need to talk to anyone to do it, the only communication you have is reading reviews and bug reports. It is hard to become a millionaire this way but making enough to get by isn't that hard.

Anyway there are probably other ways to make money without much social contact, but this is one way. It is way easier to make money just continuing working for Google and be depressed, but if I can't be happy doing it then there is no point.