OP, I have been programming since I was a kid. I was fortunate to grow up in a time before social media took over and internet was still for weird people. View

OP, I have been programming since I was a kid. I was fortunate to grow up in a time before social media took over and internet was still for weird people. Viewed externally I wasted a lot of time on the internet. I played a LOT of video games, which was my primary impetus for learning to program. I wanted to build trainers and tools someday because I looked up to the crews who were so popular when I was young. I got into to school and it took me 6 full years to graduate. I programmed and gamed (and when I wasn't doing this I was working) so much I did terrible academically in high school. I started from the bottom. I ended up graduating at 25 with a degree in computer science years behind everyone else. For a long time I regretted this because everyone I worked for was far younger than me (18-22). I then wasted several years in graduate school, which I didn't finish because it wasn't my thing, and then wasted several more years drinking at bars for no reason other than boredom. I regretted everything for a long time wondering who I'd be if I was a social person, better in high school, did more things, was more popular, etc. I still have these regrets. They never go away, you just learn to deal with them because you don't get any redos. You will make it. You're having a quarter-life crisis. Carmack is an incredible programmer but it helps to remember he was just in the right place at the right time and success builds success. How many failures did he have? Tons. It also helps he was a programmer in a time when there wasn't millions of them. These days it's far harder to get recognized. Perhaps comparing yourself to him is not worth the trouble. What you should focus on now is simply deciding something to do and going with it. You're young with plenty of screw-up room in front of you. Keep focused on your education and don't force anything else. Meet people outside of programming that are more difficult to make a direct comparison to. Go be a young person - after all youth is wasted on the young. As it turns out the more I talk to people outside of my field, the more I realize they look at me and have the same regrets about themselves. It's okay to have regrets. Don't let them keep you tied to the bed wallowing in your own self pity. Oh...if you're going to dump anything in order to change your life it should be social media. All social media in any quantity is the most lethal poison you will ever take. It creates the exact kind of comparison you are doing now to other people but scaled infinitely.