I see 2 paths to forgiving yourself. You can either use a valid reason that proves your gaming experience was truly valuable (maybe even more important than sta

I see 2 paths to forgiving yourself. You can either use a valid reason that proves your gaming experience was truly valuable (maybe even more important than staring at OS and driver docs for 20 years), which means you stop beating yourself up -- after all, you did the "right" thing! Or you just make a conscious choice to let go and forgive yourself -- sort of like if a close friend or relative hurt you deeply in some way, and there's no way they can make it up to you, but you chose to forgive them and bury the hatchet anyway. The latter is not fair, but it's not reasonable to expect fairness in everything. ---- Similar boat as you. I had no close friends growing up and all I did was go to school, play video games, watch gaming channels on YT, eat, and sleep. I spent little time with family. All I ever wanted as a kid was to shun the world, eat junk and be in front of a pc/console forever. Today, I work as a programmer. I have some close friends from college. I am feeling the gaming drive go away, not 100% sure why. But my gaming experience doesn't quite apply as well to my everyday experiences as it used to. It helps me to just make peace with myself even though I didn't "optimize" that part of my life. I'm still happy and tremendously lucky. (oh yeah, that's another thing -- it might help to be grateful you didn't end up on the street, working shitty jobs, not smart enough to be in tech, dealing with terrible health conditions etc. Life could always be so much worse.)