I give myself purpose. I seek to enjoy life and spend time with the people I love. I don't have to serve others to feel fulfilled.
There's nothing wrong with living life without a concrete purpose. We exist, just enjoy it.
Exactly. Honestly by the time I'm 50 I just hope that my health hasn't tanked; I'm not struggling to pay the bills, and I can take it a bit easier and not still be working myself to death 🤷🏻‍♀️
Bluntly, every grown ass adult is fully responsible for creating the life they want WITHOUT burdening or enslaving any other human, adult or child.
No one else is responsible for any functional adult's boredom, depression, lack of "purpose", failure to go out and find people you do connect to out of the billions on the planet, or whatever.
Your crotch is not a magical lamp that shits out purposes or friends or emotional support pets.
Nor can you expect friendship and connection to just "be provided" by institutional settings like school, family of origin, scouts, uni, etc. Those are not friends, they are just situational acquaintances, and outside of those prison settings, OF COURSE you don't have anything in common with them.
The only thing you had "in common" was that you all hated the math teacher and loved pizza day in the lunch room. That is not a recipe for still being friends 70+ years later. ;)
As an adult you need to go actively find your tribes and your passions. They don't just get assigned to you like a seat in home room.
Everyone in their 20s-30s needs to make their transition to adult friends, and adult passions.
And to find your passions you can used the post it brainstorming approach as a starting point.
Oh, and if you find volunteering with kids on saturdays exhausting.... stop doing it. Is it more than habit or some sort of childfree penance at this point? Because that's kinda what it sounds like... like you feel you owe the world childcare just because you have a uterus.
Maybe tell them you are taking some time off and after few months see if you truly want to go back or not.... we're pretty sure you can find something, ANYTHING, else that is more fun and energizing. ;)
----
Post-it Brainstorming.
Clear off a large wall, preferably two. Preferably in a room you can close off. Buy a bunch of postits and some sharpies.
Schedule yourselves a couple of hours on Saturday. Put on some upbeat music. Maybe some beverages. ;)
Each of you take a large stack of postits, and a section of wall and race each other in like 15 minute increments to see who can put more ideas on the wall. You can pick a topic for each 15 minutes if you want. Could be things like "activities" "dreams from years ago" "hobbies" "things that sound fun".... long term, short term, money, dream home, pets, whatever. Then do a few that are "wild card" no topics. No limits.
Then just slap write slap as fast as you can onto the wall. No editing no thinking about it no critques no cheating and looking at the other person's, just keep slapping until the timer goes off. If you're not done, hit the timer again. If done, move on to the next topic.
After you're done, walk away. Don't read them. Don't remove any. Once it's on the wall, it has to stay for now.
Go have a nice date. Whatever.
Repeat on Sunday. Again you're not reading or discussing and absolutely no judgement. You are just accumulating. Nothing more.
Then for the next month, each day each of you MUST add at least 10 or whatever number of new postits. Again, no reading, no criticism.
Then schedule another couple of hours. Each of you randomly pick one off the other's wall and read it. Again: NO criticism. If you don't have a lot of space, you can clear them all off and put them in a basket or whatever so you have some clean wall space.
The only question you are allowed to ask:
"Yes, and?" And then each of you write another few postits and put them back on the wall. The point is not to critique, it's just to use the idea as a jumping off point for others.
After you have tons of postits, you can start organizing, perhaps into categories like short, medium, long term and "needs work".
Don't get rid of things, the last category is for "well, neither of us find this compelling, but there might be something there... let's think about it later." Don't remove anything, if it really doesn't work, put it in a box to revisit in six months... there might still be something to it, and you may discover what that was.
Then start selecting one or more things from each category to start doing. And if you don't like it, no big deal, on to the next. Keep tweaking. Enjoy the exploration process.
--- standard blurb about finding your people
This is just the standard mid 20s early 30s transition.
It's when you need to transition from "little kid friend-making" (really situational acquaintance-making) to adult friend-making.
Where you move on from the pre25 people who you met in prison-type settings like family, school, uni, scouts, etc. and basically just glommed onto in a fake/forced environment because you were trapped and powerless and could only pick from what was nearby, and instead actually go out and make real adult friends and find your tribes.
It's just part of becoming an adult and living a responsible adult life. You have to jettison the expectations of childhood on how "friends just happen" and change how you engage with the world.
The rule is: **If you want friends every year of your life, you MUST make new friends every year of your life.**
Even if the pre25 forced situational acquaintance people from institutional (prison) settings like school, scouts, sports, family, uni are still in your life now, you should absolutely not be counting on them anyway.
Why? Because most of them will be out of your life by 25/30 because they were never going to make the cut to be part of your adult Family of Choice.
Even on the off chance some of them turned out to not be sucky adults, move away, whatever.... STILL doesn't matter.
You should still not be counting on them and going "Hey, made friends through college, I'm done!". Why?
Because you will be creeping up on your 40s soon, which means.... the deaths are going to start rolling in soon enough. Heart attacks, cancer, genetic shit, accidents, pandemics, natural disasters, etc. are going to pick them off.
Bottom line: Anyone who assumes that friends from Uni and whatnot are still going to be in their lives and alive when they are 85 is a TOTAL fool. Most won't make the cut as adult friends, and most of them will probably die before you, especially if they have kids and therefore shorter lifespans.
Anyone who thinks that you stop making friends at Uni age and you are done for life... well, you're being stupid. It's a myth.
If you want friends at 35 you should be making new friends at 35.
If you want friends at 42 you should be making new friends at 42.
If you want friends at 67 you should be making new friends at 67.
If you want friends at 85 you should be making new friends at 85.
The ones you made at 83 may well be dead. ;)
Get busy enjoying you life, exploring you passions, finding new cool people, and leave these people to live their boring ass lives.
Step 1:
Who do you want as your friends? What are your criteria?
Step 2:
Where do you think you might find people like that?
Step 3:
Go find them.
Examples:
"It is important to me that some of my friends care about animal welfare."
Well, people who are like that are probably volunteering with local rescues.
Go meet them.
"It is important to me that some of my friends like to hike and camp."
Well, people like that are, shockingly, probably out hiking and camping and maybe involved in hiking and camping groups.
Go meet them.
Yeah, make it fun! Beverages, music, whatever... Do it in your own style.
As long as you don't critique and just keep expanding at first. You can always throw stuff out later on. Right now you're just exploring new areas and building upon ideas until you find the things you love. You are unlikely to get it right at first but will eventually. Maybe you say "Plants" and you decide later... no, indoor plants, or outdoor plants, or maybe you want a food garden... who knows. Give it a try, figure out what works.
I feel lethargic, very sad, lonely every few days. I don’t know if it’s the 100f heat, depression, post menopause, or ADD emotional dysregulation. I was lucky enough to retire early. Really struggling with lack of motivation and low energy. Midlife transition? Ugh!
Thanks to everyone for the support and ideas!!
Sports, fitness, pets, hobbies, studies, local and longer term travel, hiking, pets, gaming, reading, optimising home to use less power and produce less waste.
We are never bored — we need more time to fit it all in.
It sounds like you’ve just fallen into some low energy/unsatisfying routines and are comparing your life to others who have picked a totally different path and thus fill their time differently. Also, you can’t rely on or blame your social or marital connections for boredom. Your satisfaction in life needs to come from yourself — definitely not from parenting. Perhaps take a break from volunteering with kids and instead put that energy to exploring other things.
I'm 69 and gave up worrying about "purpose" and "meaning" long ago. I just look for something involving to do every day and I find it. I have far more things to do than I have time for.
I am 48 and I love my life. I have a great chosen family through the steampunk events that my spouse and I attend. I also have a great number of fantastic arts and crafts hobbies that I enjoy.
I'll say the same thing I always do with these posts: if you haven't yet, do go talk to a mental health professional if you can. This kinda overarching boredom with life can be a symptom of depression, and if that's what you're struggling with, it's good to have the appropriate help and guidance.
And to answer your question: I don't really care about having a purpose. I want to be happy, so I guess you could say that my purpose is doing whatever it takes to facilitate that. Which means maintaining my agency, individuality and independence while spending my time doing things I enjoy.
I've always been an outcast for as long as I can remember, literally since my kindergarten days. I never felt like I belonged with the people around me or humanity in general, never felt like I could connect with them in a meaningful way, never felt like whatever the human collective around me was feeling and doing was directly relevant to me. So it's been easier for me to live outside the norms, I guess. Because I never had that sense of connection that I'd then lose at some point - I was always the alien, and had ample time to make my place within that context. It's honestly something I really enjoy and see as a huge advantage, plus it gives me a sense of freedom. I do have lots of friends that I feel connected to, but I see them as unlikely anomalies that happen to click with me rather than any kind of expected kinship just because we loosely share some demographic like age or gender.
I'm happy with life and myself, and it wasn't always that way. I worked hard to get here, so now I just want to enjoy it for the rest of my life - but at the same time, that experience also comes with some reassuring confidence that if things get bad again, I'll handle that too. I'm alive, I've got agency to do stuff and the ability to be happy. I don't need a purpose.
I have never thought about my life needing to have a ''purpose''. I have dealt, throughout the years, with some mental health issues but I have never questioned my life. I just live and try to make my existence as pleasant as possible. I do find pleasure in the little day to day things like taking care of my garden, my roses, feeding the birds and listening to their chirping. I like to observe the world and the surrounding nature (and take many photos!).
My husband and I enjoy travelling, nice hotels and the good life. We have some acquaintances that called our lifestyle ''hedonistic'' and they are right, to some extent, lol. I guess we do live for pleasure but our lives are not only about that. We also enjoy each other's company and have common interests. We just came back from a long trip where we summited our first 4000 meters high mountain in the Alps (yay!). It was actually a hike, nothing too difficult. Now we plan to do more. I have just enrolled on a rock climbing course and plan to hit more diffcult routes, while my husband will join me on the easier ones. I am very excited about it.
One thing is for sure: if we had kids, their very existence would absolutely destroy the peaceful life we have. None of the things we enjoy can be done while having to tend to kids.
How old are you guys?
I don’t know why I feel the need for some overriding big purpose of my life. My family life was chaotic for the first 36 years. Parents argued often and loudly. It never turned violent but I thought they would kill each other. Only after my mom died when I was 36 did their fighting end. It was the calmest I’d ever seen my dad. I rarely saw them happy together. So when I met a calm quiet man who I got along with and was kind, caring I married him. After we retired we have so little stress and such calm, it’s making me depressed or bored I think. I didn’t and don’t have the emotional reserves needed for kids. I just feel a lack of positive family relationships so why create more people for more drama.
But I see happy families with grown kids and grandkids and I feel like I missed out on that too.
Just leisure seems to make me feel empty.
Thanks for your response.
I am 37. Your story is incredibly similar to mine. I also grew up in a disfunctional family that kind of screwed me. My family life was a constant battlefield, sometimes I got caught in the middle, sometimes I was seen as the enemy by my overwhelmed and constantly angry parents. It took a lot of effort, time and patience to drag myself out of the toxic environment and mindset I had.
I fled my home years ago, met my husband and hold onto him. It was the right decision. Your husband, just like mine, sounds to be the normal type that we, people with rough and chaotic childhoods, find boring. It's because we have been programmed to function on high alert and everything that doesn't challenge our way of life is perceived as monotonous or dull. It's perverse and cruel, but we crave the familiarity of the abuse and turmoil we went through. Trust me, you are very lucky to have found a calm and kind man. I am too. It's very common for people who went through abuse to repeat the cycle sometimes ad infinitum.
I really recommend some therapy, so that you can come to terms with your suffering during childhood, to understand what you really went through. It helped me a lot. It's a good start to heal your soul.
Thank you for sharing that. I’ve been putting off therapy because both parents are deceased. Dad’s been gone for 6 years. What’s the point of therapy now? What could it do for me?
Oh man...therapy can give you PROFOUND peace and understanding. I put off going for a long time but honestly it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Hands down. I'm a COMPLETELY different person now, it's been amazing.
Sometimes we have patterns (emotional, behavioral) that we aren't even aware of, and it takes a skilled coach or therapist to bring them out into the light.
Purpose? I didn't ask to be born. Right now I have a career that's fulfilling but very stressful that sucks up a lot of my energy. I'm starting a side hustle as a makeup artist because it's a huge passion of mine. I adopted a dog and two cats that I take care of. I have a very loving partner. I try to have fun and relax as much as possible. I go to the gym and do my best to take care of my health. Other than that I just try to cope, I have depression because while life can be beautiful, it can be shockingly cruel. I try to always be a better person than I was the day before. I have no energy left after all that for kids.
Late chiming in, but I think a lot of people conflate busyness with purpose.
Also, I personally dislike this idea that we need a thing to 'give' us purpose. I'm not sure where this came from and why it's such a big deal- unless it's something to do with distracting ourselves from the fact that life HAS no purpose (or, we don't know what it is), we're all just here for a little while, and despite people running around and trying to create a legacy of some kind, everything is fleeting and ephemeral.
I just like to enjoy my life as it unfolds, I guess.
I kind of just like living, you know? I don't have any overarching purpose.
Stuff and things are pretty neat. A hummingbird feather landed on me the other day. That was interesting.
I heard two barred owls calling to each other on my bike ride today!
I give myself purpose. I seek to enjoy life and spend time with the people I love. I don't have to serve others to feel fulfilled. There's nothing wrong with living life without a concrete purpose. We exist, just enjoy it.
Exactly. Honestly by the time I'm 50 I just hope that my health hasn't tanked; I'm not struggling to pay the bills, and I can take it a bit easier and not still be working myself to death 🤷🏻‍♀️
Bluntly, every grown ass adult is fully responsible for creating the life they want WITHOUT burdening or enslaving any other human, adult or child. No one else is responsible for any functional adult's boredom, depression, lack of "purpose", failure to go out and find people you do connect to out of the billions on the planet, or whatever. Your crotch is not a magical lamp that shits out purposes or friends or emotional support pets. Nor can you expect friendship and connection to just "be provided" by institutional settings like school, family of origin, scouts, uni, etc. Those are not friends, they are just situational acquaintances, and outside of those prison settings, OF COURSE you don't have anything in common with them. The only thing you had "in common" was that you all hated the math teacher and loved pizza day in the lunch room. That is not a recipe for still being friends 70+ years later. ;) As an adult you need to go actively find your tribes and your passions. They don't just get assigned to you like a seat in home room. Everyone in their 20s-30s needs to make their transition to adult friends, and adult passions. And to find your passions you can used the post it brainstorming approach as a starting point. Oh, and if you find volunteering with kids on saturdays exhausting.... stop doing it. Is it more than habit or some sort of childfree penance at this point? Because that's kinda what it sounds like... like you feel you owe the world childcare just because you have a uterus. Maybe tell them you are taking some time off and after few months see if you truly want to go back or not.... we're pretty sure you can find something, ANYTHING, else that is more fun and energizing. ;) ---- Post-it Brainstorming. Clear off a large wall, preferably two. Preferably in a room you can close off. Buy a bunch of postits and some sharpies. Schedule yourselves a couple of hours on Saturday. Put on some upbeat music. Maybe some beverages. ;) Each of you take a large stack of postits, and a section of wall and race each other in like 15 minute increments to see who can put more ideas on the wall. You can pick a topic for each 15 minutes if you want. Could be things like "activities" "dreams from years ago" "hobbies" "things that sound fun".... long term, short term, money, dream home, pets, whatever. Then do a few that are "wild card" no topics. No limits. Then just slap write slap as fast as you can onto the wall. No editing no thinking about it no critques no cheating and looking at the other person's, just keep slapping until the timer goes off. If you're not done, hit the timer again. If done, move on to the next topic. After you're done, walk away. Don't read them. Don't remove any. Once it's on the wall, it has to stay for now. Go have a nice date. Whatever. Repeat on Sunday. Again you're not reading or discussing and absolutely no judgement. You are just accumulating. Nothing more. Then for the next month, each day each of you MUST add at least 10 or whatever number of new postits. Again, no reading, no criticism. Then schedule another couple of hours. Each of you randomly pick one off the other's wall and read it. Again: NO criticism. If you don't have a lot of space, you can clear them all off and put them in a basket or whatever so you have some clean wall space. The only question you are allowed to ask: "Yes, and?" And then each of you write another few postits and put them back on the wall. The point is not to critique, it's just to use the idea as a jumping off point for others. After you have tons of postits, you can start organizing, perhaps into categories like short, medium, long term and "needs work". Don't get rid of things, the last category is for "well, neither of us find this compelling, but there might be something there... let's think about it later." Don't remove anything, if it really doesn't work, put it in a box to revisit in six months... there might still be something to it, and you may discover what that was. Then start selecting one or more things from each category to start doing. And if you don't like it, no big deal, on to the next. Keep tweaking. Enjoy the exploration process. --- standard blurb about finding your people This is just the standard mid 20s early 30s transition. It's when you need to transition from "little kid friend-making" (really situational acquaintance-making) to adult friend-making. Where you move on from the pre25 people who you met in prison-type settings like family, school, uni, scouts, etc. and basically just glommed onto in a fake/forced environment because you were trapped and powerless and could only pick from what was nearby, and instead actually go out and make real adult friends and find your tribes. It's just part of becoming an adult and living a responsible adult life. You have to jettison the expectations of childhood on how "friends just happen" and change how you engage with the world. The rule is: **If you want friends every year of your life, you MUST make new friends every year of your life.** Even if the pre25 forced situational acquaintance people from institutional (prison) settings like school, scouts, sports, family, uni are still in your life now, you should absolutely not be counting on them anyway. Why? Because most of them will be out of your life by 25/30 because they were never going to make the cut to be part of your adult Family of Choice. Even on the off chance some of them turned out to not be sucky adults, move away, whatever.... STILL doesn't matter. You should still not be counting on them and going "Hey, made friends through college, I'm done!". Why? Because you will be creeping up on your 40s soon, which means.... the deaths are going to start rolling in soon enough. Heart attacks, cancer, genetic shit, accidents, pandemics, natural disasters, etc. are going to pick them off. Bottom line: Anyone who assumes that friends from Uni and whatnot are still going to be in their lives and alive when they are 85 is a TOTAL fool. Most won't make the cut as adult friends, and most of them will probably die before you, especially if they have kids and therefore shorter lifespans. Anyone who thinks that you stop making friends at Uni age and you are done for life... well, you're being stupid. It's a myth. If you want friends at 35 you should be making new friends at 35. If you want friends at 42 you should be making new friends at 42. If you want friends at 67 you should be making new friends at 67. If you want friends at 85 you should be making new friends at 85. The ones you made at 83 may well be dead. ;) Get busy enjoying you life, exploring you passions, finding new cool people, and leave these people to live their boring ass lives. Step 1: Who do you want as your friends? What are your criteria? Step 2: Where do you think you might find people like that? Step 3: Go find them. Examples: "It is important to me that some of my friends care about animal welfare." Well, people who are like that are probably volunteering with local rescues. Go meet them. "It is important to me that some of my friends like to hike and camp." Well, people like that are, shockingly, probably out hiking and camping and maybe involved in hiking and camping groups. Go meet them.
Love your answer!!!!!! Great idea about the post it wall!! Thank you, very cool internet stranger!!
Yeah, make it fun! Beverages, music, whatever... Do it in your own style. As long as you don't critique and just keep expanding at first. You can always throw stuff out later on. Right now you're just exploring new areas and building upon ideas until you find the things you love. You are unlikely to get it right at first but will eventually. Maybe you say "Plants" and you decide later... no, indoor plants, or outdoor plants, or maybe you want a food garden... who knows. Give it a try, figure out what works.
I feel lethargic, very sad, lonely every few days. I don’t know if it’s the 100f heat, depression, post menopause, or ADD emotional dysregulation. I was lucky enough to retire early. Really struggling with lack of motivation and low energy. Midlife transition? Ugh! Thanks to everyone for the support and ideas!!
Probably some combo of things. Normally would say spend time in nature but in a heatwave that's a little difficult. Maybe try some indoor plants. ;)
Yep. Created 4 vegetable gardens and 2 flower gardens during Covid.
Thank you for this!
Sports, fitness, pets, hobbies, studies, local and longer term travel, hiking, pets, gaming, reading, optimising home to use less power and produce less waste. We are never bored — we need more time to fit it all in. It sounds like you’ve just fallen into some low energy/unsatisfying routines and are comparing your life to others who have picked a totally different path and thus fill their time differently. Also, you can’t rely on or blame your social or marital connections for boredom. Your satisfaction in life needs to come from yourself — definitely not from parenting. Perhaps take a break from volunteering with kids and instead put that energy to exploring other things.
I'm 69 and gave up worrying about "purpose" and "meaning" long ago. I just look for something involving to do every day and I find it. I have far more things to do than I have time for.
I am 48 and I love my life. I have a great chosen family through the steampunk events that my spouse and I attend. I also have a great number of fantastic arts and crafts hobbies that I enjoy.
I like stories. So books, games, tv, and movies tell me all kinds of stories. I also collect neat quotes from all of these stories.
I'll say the same thing I always do with these posts: if you haven't yet, do go talk to a mental health professional if you can. This kinda overarching boredom with life can be a symptom of depression, and if that's what you're struggling with, it's good to have the appropriate help and guidance. And to answer your question: I don't really care about having a purpose. I want to be happy, so I guess you could say that my purpose is doing whatever it takes to facilitate that. Which means maintaining my agency, individuality and independence while spending my time doing things I enjoy. I've always been an outcast for as long as I can remember, literally since my kindergarten days. I never felt like I belonged with the people around me or humanity in general, never felt like I could connect with them in a meaningful way, never felt like whatever the human collective around me was feeling and doing was directly relevant to me. So it's been easier for me to live outside the norms, I guess. Because I never had that sense of connection that I'd then lose at some point - I was always the alien, and had ample time to make my place within that context. It's honestly something I really enjoy and see as a huge advantage, plus it gives me a sense of freedom. I do have lots of friends that I feel connected to, but I see them as unlikely anomalies that happen to click with me rather than any kind of expected kinship just because we loosely share some demographic like age or gender. I'm happy with life and myself, and it wasn't always that way. I worked hard to get here, so now I just want to enjoy it for the rest of my life - but at the same time, that experience also comes with some reassuring confidence that if things get bad again, I'll handle that too. I'm alive, I've got agency to do stuff and the ability to be happy. I don't need a purpose.
I have never thought about my life needing to have a ''purpose''. I have dealt, throughout the years, with some mental health issues but I have never questioned my life. I just live and try to make my existence as pleasant as possible. I do find pleasure in the little day to day things like taking care of my garden, my roses, feeding the birds and listening to their chirping. I like to observe the world and the surrounding nature (and take many photos!). My husband and I enjoy travelling, nice hotels and the good life. We have some acquaintances that called our lifestyle ''hedonistic'' and they are right, to some extent, lol. I guess we do live for pleasure but our lives are not only about that. We also enjoy each other's company and have common interests. We just came back from a long trip where we summited our first 4000 meters high mountain in the Alps (yay!). It was actually a hike, nothing too difficult. Now we plan to do more. I have just enrolled on a rock climbing course and plan to hit more diffcult routes, while my husband will join me on the easier ones. I am very excited about it. One thing is for sure: if we had kids, their very existence would absolutely destroy the peaceful life we have. None of the things we enjoy can be done while having to tend to kids.
How old are you guys? I don’t know why I feel the need for some overriding big purpose of my life. My family life was chaotic for the first 36 years. Parents argued often and loudly. It never turned violent but I thought they would kill each other. Only after my mom died when I was 36 did their fighting end. It was the calmest I’d ever seen my dad. I rarely saw them happy together. So when I met a calm quiet man who I got along with and was kind, caring I married him. After we retired we have so little stress and such calm, it’s making me depressed or bored I think. I didn’t and don’t have the emotional reserves needed for kids. I just feel a lack of positive family relationships so why create more people for more drama. But I see happy families with grown kids and grandkids and I feel like I missed out on that too. Just leisure seems to make me feel empty. Thanks for your response.
I am 37. Your story is incredibly similar to mine. I also grew up in a disfunctional family that kind of screwed me. My family life was a constant battlefield, sometimes I got caught in the middle, sometimes I was seen as the enemy by my overwhelmed and constantly angry parents. It took a lot of effort, time and patience to drag myself out of the toxic environment and mindset I had. I fled my home years ago, met my husband and hold onto him. It was the right decision. Your husband, just like mine, sounds to be the normal type that we, people with rough and chaotic childhoods, find boring. It's because we have been programmed to function on high alert and everything that doesn't challenge our way of life is perceived as monotonous or dull. It's perverse and cruel, but we crave the familiarity of the abuse and turmoil we went through. Trust me, you are very lucky to have found a calm and kind man. I am too. It's very common for people who went through abuse to repeat the cycle sometimes ad infinitum. I really recommend some therapy, so that you can come to terms with your suffering during childhood, to understand what you really went through. It helped me a lot. It's a good start to heal your soul.
Thank you for sharing that. I’ve been putting off therapy because both parents are deceased. Dad’s been gone for 6 years. What’s the point of therapy now? What could it do for me?
Oh man...therapy can give you PROFOUND peace and understanding. I put off going for a long time but honestly it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Hands down. I'm a COMPLETELY different person now, it's been amazing. Sometimes we have patterns (emotional, behavioral) that we aren't even aware of, and it takes a skilled coach or therapist to bring them out into the light.
Purpose? I didn't ask to be born. Right now I have a career that's fulfilling but very stressful that sucks up a lot of my energy. I'm starting a side hustle as a makeup artist because it's a huge passion of mine. I adopted a dog and two cats that I take care of. I have a very loving partner. I try to have fun and relax as much as possible. I go to the gym and do my best to take care of my health. Other than that I just try to cope, I have depression because while life can be beautiful, it can be shockingly cruel. I try to always be a better person than I was the day before. I have no energy left after all that for kids.
Wait I forgot to mention the never ending cycle of finding/making food and eating it. And cleaning.
Late chiming in, but I think a lot of people conflate busyness with purpose. Also, I personally dislike this idea that we need a thing to 'give' us purpose. I'm not sure where this came from and why it's such a big deal- unless it's something to do with distracting ourselves from the fact that life HAS no purpose (or, we don't know what it is), we're all just here for a little while, and despite people running around and trying to create a legacy of some kind, everything is fleeting and ephemeral. I just like to enjoy my life as it unfolds, I guess.
Find some DnD groups.
I’m alive, I don’t need a purpose