@OP: Yes. Here's another account of a person - me - eating life's lemons by grinding throughout life: - I, too, have a dysfunctional family (heavy physical an

@OP: Yes. Here's another account of a person - me - eating life's lemons by grinding throughout life: - I, too, have a dysfunctional family (heavy physical and psychological abuse). (My father beat up my mother and us now estranged siblings until we were blue and crying. Additionally, our mother beat us up too and abused us psychologically. I am not only estranged to my siblings, I am also estranged to my other relatives. So, I have close to no social support like you.) - Yes, compared to my peers, I am fairly behind things. I am late to the "party" called life. I am studying CS and by the time I complete my degree, I will near my mid 30s. Prior to that, I worked in dead end jobs like you as well (not in tech, not with computers). No idea how my remaining life will fold out after I manage to graduate from school with a CS degree. I have to compete with the 22-year-old fresh graduates and my peers my age who are very likely well beyond my skill-level (due to more experience). Anyhow, the "domino comment" from muzani is helpful. Reminds me of a chapter from the book "Algorithms to Live By". @giantg2: Yeah, I feel the same. Most of the stuff coming up in tech are short-lived things. I noticed that especially in web development. That's why I focus on fundamental subjects: math, algorithms (including various rendering, deep learning algorithms). So I don't learn APIs that go obsolete (like in the case of OpenGL. C, C++, SDL, Python, JavaScript, Bash are enough for most of my purposes. I call this "essentialism" as I try to learn long-lasting things. E.g. a rendering algorithm I learned the other day will work no matter how many years will pass. Unlike frameworks/APIs that depreciate fast. I just need to encode that algorithm in a programming language that's it.) @ALL: PS: HN hates postings like mine, b/c it is not adding value to the community according to some HNers. I would like to therefore apologize to those HNers who feel that HN content should be only tech-focused and no "touchy-feely" subjects. HN has apparently a low tolerance for "touchy-feely" subjects. Or maybe I am missing something here. Not sure... My purpose with this comment was to tell OP that he/she is not alone with this.