I did quit my phd project half a year ago, and quite a bit of what you are writing reminds me of the time before I did quit. So first of all, you are not alone

I did quit my phd project half a year ago, and quite a bit of what you are writing reminds me of the time before I did quit. So first of all, you are not alone with this experience. Others were there before, and sadly others will encounter that dark place in the future. On the bright side, the half year since I quit was a really great time. So it sounds, like you are making mistakes, because you made mistakes. The advice stop that is probably not really helpful, but you need to stop it somehow. For me it was a long struggle to first understand why nothing is working like it should, followed by a long struggle to pull myself together again and finally taking control of my situation, which meant quitting in my case. Like you, I also have "world changing" ideas to make people's lives easier and healthier, [...] Frankly, comparing your accomplishments to the HN front page is a recipe for disaster. Thing is, most people will never get to the front page with a Show HN post, and even those who do worked a long time on these projects. There is simply no one who gets to the front page week after week on the strength of quick hacks. More than that I repeatedly had to tell lie to family and girlfriend about my college- that I am still going classes. Stop that, apologize for lying and tell them the situation you are in. The situation will not improve if you do not have a good social safety net. On the other hand, they care for you, they will try to help you. Looking again through your text, it seems to me that you hope for a quick fix. Unfortunately there is no such thing, never. It is a struggle day after day and accomplishments can only be evaluated in hindsight, sometimes you underestimate the time a project will take usually you overestimate and the roads not taken only look good because you never encountered the roadblocks on them. My advice would be, take two or three weeks of, try to understand your situation, and try to start getting better. Do not finish anything in this time frame. If you need someone to talk to, feel free to send me an email. My email address is in my profile.