I don't know you, but based purely on what you wrote here, it sounds like you could knock out half of your troubles by simply not being an engineer working a 9-

I don't know you, but based purely on what you wrote here, it sounds like you could knock out half of your troubles by simply not being an engineer working a 9-5. :-) There are infinite possibilities for life. Would you choose to sit at a desk all day, if you had to do it all again? Or is that just what you happened to get from picking the default option, every step of the way? As to the unanswerable questions, we've invented philosophy and art and religion and meditation and others to help tackle those. Don't expect to find answers in engineering or science. They're great but that's not what they're for. I've found my answers to these questions, but if they were the sort of questions which could be answered in a few words, we'd just have a "MEANING OF EXISTENCE" pamphlet to give to everyone in first grade. We can't even write a single document on how to write good software, and that is much more concrete and focused. I'm in the middle of making a big career change myself. There's no secret trick to finding what you're meant to do. You just have to keep trying new things until you find it. Go for it.