it's not just that i'm depressed - been there, done that. it just all feels so much more hopeless now. at least in high school and college in the back of my mind i knew it was all temporary, but what am i supposed to do now that there is no end in sight? this is the rest of my life.

this is all life has to offer. i could repeat this routine until i die, easily. no big milestones, no big life shifts left. of course that's a little naive, and i could choose to make significant changes if i made certain choices, but none that meaningfully change the core loop.

and that's not to say the past was good, or that life shifts are inherently good. it's that i could at least pretend or dream that the paradigm shift would qualitatively improve my wellbeing. even though i never actually did that, and never had any expectation that things would improve, at least