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I'm depressed, anxious, and lost. I'm 38, married, and I have two daughters. My career seems to be stuck. I work in IT, but I don't think I'm actually very go

• mettamage 6y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm just a random person on the internet, but a lot of issues you wrote about ringed home to me. So below here is how I dealt with all of them. And in some cases, I'm simply offering a thing or two here, because I feel like you need some companionship (and since I have no clue on how to meet people during this pandemic, I'm doing it this way). > I write Python but I never learned how to use the Python debugger. I can show you my workflow. Feel free to email me. I love debuggers. > Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass. I think a lot of us do. I came to accept that this is the way it is. > I tried to learn TypeScript and React and I just can't get it. I've learned enough React and TypeScript to have some insights into this. Self-learning this takes around 100 hours. This is how I did it: - Read a book (e.g. Road to React) and code whatever the book says - Then make a project on your own that is like the project of the book but not completely - Now make a project (small) that is something different You're now ready to code in actual React. My route for this was: 1. Code whatever Road to React says 2. Make a favorites app. List your favorite websites and give it 1 to 5 stars. 3. My thesis (tbh convincing the academic board that a React project was scientific was as hard as the project itself :P). My thesis was an XML parser that feed to output to React components which would be rendered. Note: the XML language was academic and my claim was that there would be a 30% code reduction by using React, which was true as no parsing was needed anymore, you could use a webpack plugin. > My wife isn't a gamer and there's nobody to play with me. I've noticed that I only like and play games because my friends play them. And I then become quite competitive and practice that game over and over and over again. I always wondered why I was addicted to games, it was just a distorted way for my need for human contact. With that said, feel free to email me to play Among Us. It's one of the few games that I allow myself to play (as long as I know someone who wants to play as well). > eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone during work days In my country it's quite easy to circumvent this as we have good bread, butter and peanutbutter (so I simply make that as a sandwich, super quick), throw in some tangerines and that's my "fastfood". Do you have similar ways of doing that? > When I'm off work and get home, I take care of watching over the little one do her homework, I have supper and I do the dishes, and then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful. For the past 6 months, I mostly worked 4 days per week instead of 5. The difference is massive. It sounds like your energy is being depleted too much for what you can handle right now.
• mathgenius 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing... Plenty of devs don't like using debuggers. It's just a style thing. We use print instead. (The only time i really need a debugger is when my c code segfaults.) Are you sure you suck at debugging? It is the hardest part of the job. Good devs always write down (to keep the bugs at bay). Don't worry about learning other languages, much better to be interested in something. Try to find something that interests you. Common dude, eat better food [1]! Try to get more raw food. I gotta do this too. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9__23-zjhM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9__23-zjhM
• incog_nit0 6y ago
  Also 38, also married, also two daughters, also have depression. I can't tell you what works or not for you but I can say what helped me go from suicidal over a failing business to functional enough to interview at 20+ tech companies and land a job I like. I firstly spoke with someone. Dealing with depression totally alone is not easy. I don't know your wife (ofc) but if someone married you they (probably?) care enough to hear more than just good news from you. If you really can't afford to share with your wife then damn, that's rough, but do share with someone who knows your situation and can advise your doctor, a therapist, a parent, someone. Deleting contacts on social is a symptom of depression. I did it and my counsellor raised it. Ask yourself if you'd notice if someone unfriended you first? It's not like FB notifies you. Your friends and family care, they do, but they also have their own lives and also let's be honest, a lot of people hardly check FB in depth these days anyways. No one is going to notice their friend list drop down by 1. > I eat the cheapest fast food lunch alone I'm gonna be dictatorial on this one and just say 'stop'. Don't do it. Junk food is a treat, like ice cream. You wouldn't incorporate ice cream as a regular part of your nutrition. > then it gets late and I have no more energy to do anything useful That's true for any parent, especially those dealing with stress and depression. You're not alone on this one. I get done with the day after tucking my kids in and I literally have like 1-2 hours to maybe learn something tech related to advance my career or veg out with my wife and enjoy a TV show. It sucks, but that's life, no parent I've spoken with differs in this regard. > I have no idea how to spend my free time. Another symptom of depression. Loss of interest in things we used to enjoy doing or withdrawing from hobbies. So what if you have 1000 games, they're there to give you joy not anxiety. You might have 9000 grains of rice in a 1lb bag in your cupboard but you don't worry about when you'll eat each individual one. Let them be, not playing them is as valid an option as playing them. Probably more so if you're time poor. > Every time I'm asked to give an estimate for something I feel like I'm pulling a random number out of my ass. I think software has this problem regardless, some of us are better at estimating some less so. I wouldn't worry about that. Unless you're repeating a development task you've done before many times (write a new rest controller, develop a CRUD web app) it's heard to give an estimate on something you haven't done before. Pick a language you like and which advances the career you want and just start reading, hacking, messing around with it. Python's a great one for work and play tbh, but the important thing is to start. Most of the great coders I've worked with just get stuck into something new, they don't seem to care too much whether what they're learning will be obsolete or is non-optimal. I myself struggle with this one which is probably why I only know Java :)