One thing you learn as you get older is that everybody is in the same boat in this journey on earth and there’s likely no truth and no point in excessively pity

One thing you learn as you get older is that everybody is in the same boat in this journey on earth and there’s likely no truth and no point in excessively pitying yourself or think of what you experienced as anything unique or extraordinarily awful. This is the human condition and we need to learn to embrace it and be at peace with it. In fact I have probably done much more than a lot of peers of the same age group (how much of that is “useful” in a practical sense is dubious, e.g. achieving N1 level in Japanese, about which I also used to wonder whether I could have spent such time programming more, but on the other hand learning languages was part of my identity, so I was generally happy to have spent time on them), but even then, when I was younger, I was constantly anxious that I was not doing enough and just wasting my life away. Now I feel less afflicted by that thought. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t dedicate my time to meaningful and productive endeavors, but you may find peace in knowing that people like Carmack require so many things to go their way to get there, and statistically speaking you’re much more likely to not reach that level than do, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that fact.