salute! "a better strategy is to get on with it with a sort of calm, peaceful acceptance of things, even when they are negative" and clear noise and relax. I did went offline for 7 days. feel much fresher!
Another perspective, if I may: you write that you've been taking care of your family since you were in school, and have made it through a rough life to be considered a candidate for both Google and AWS? You're Awesome! What do you care about those companies and their broken interview processes?
A personal anecdote I just went through this week: a few years ago, I lost an interview with a company I really wanted to work for. Part of the reason I wanted to work there was that a lot of people I knew and respected worked there, and they seemed very happy when I visited for the interview. I was pretty down after that. This week one of the people who worked there reached out, and among other things we discussed, it appears he had a horrible time there, and there was no reason for me to feel down about not being accepted. Also, I spent this past summer as an intern at Google, and while I don't want to start the usual "is Google still a cool place to work at" fights here, I do feel comfortable writing that my own very subjective conclusion is that one can get stuck at an uninteresting role at Google, like in any other company.
A personal anecdote I just went through this week: a few years ago, I lost an interview with a company I really wanted to work for. Part of the reason I wanted to work there was that a lot of people I knew and respected worked there, and they seemed very happy when I visited for the interview. I was pretty down after that. This week one of the people who worked there reached out, and among other things we discussed, it appears he had a horrible time there, and there was no reason for me to feel down about not being accepted. Also, I spent this past summer as an intern at Google, and while I don't want to start the usual "is Google still a cool place to work at" fights here, I do feel comfortable writing that my own very subjective conclusion is that one can get stuck at an uninteresting role at Google, like in any other company.
Keep meditating, and keep being awesome.