I hate working as a software engineer. I'm convinced it's the most tedious job on the planet. I would rather count termites, by hand, one-by-one. (I don't know

I hate working as a software engineer. I'm convinced it's the most tedious job on the planet. I would rather count termites, by hand, one-by-one. (I don't know why that specifically is the alternative I came up with. Just go with it.) My loathing of this work, an activity which was the light of my life when I was growing up, led me to behave in the way you describe. The worst part is that it didn't feel like a choice I was making. I felt physically unable to even start typing. And then the self-loathing starts--what kind of loser/leech/fraud am I?--while feeling powerless to do anything about it. I've never been so miserable. (Yes, I've been evaluated for ADHD. No, that's not the problem--or at least the solution to ADHD is not the solution to this.) Eventually I decided it wasn't worth it. I took an enormous pay cut (more than half) to switch to a very, very different field. At first I had some money problems. Changing one's mindset from not having to even think about a budget, to having to actually make choices, does not happen overnight. But after a while I was in good shape and had enough to meet my needs, save, and have a little left over for fun stuff. Then I made the idiotic mistake of going back to school. Now I'm back in this awful industry again out of sheer necessity, and I'm miserable again. You can bet your buttons I'll be out the door and back to my other career the instant my debt is paid off. It's not that I'm not good at programming. I am. I've built some stuff everyone here has heard of, and that a lot of people use. I've been on some fantastic teams. But those times were the rare exception. It's also not that I don't enjoy programming per se. I do enjoy it again, up to a point, when it's no longer my job. But as work--this industry just isn't for me. And it sounds like it isn't for you either. The sooner you accept that and move on, the happier you'll be. (Aside: How is it not a global fucking crisis that 85% of people hate their jobs? You know, the thing they spend most of their time doing? 85% of people hate most of their waking lives, and we're just fine with that.)