I grew up in an immigrant household that did not accept The West. Child abuse/trauma ensued, and I was threatened to pursue a career I didn't want, despite having expressed deep interests in engineering.
I went to grad school, hated it, dropped out at the 11th hour with ~$300k in debt to pursue "startups", wholly unequipped in terms of experience, skills, network, and mental health. A year later, I cofounded a company with someone I'd only recently met. I was admittedly a terrible cofounder – wrecked with fear, avoidant, totally incapable of stepping up to the challenge. I was great at shutting my mouth, going with the flow, and taking orders.
The company grew to a stage where I couldn't keep up, and I was eventually let go. Looking back, I would've given myself the boot if I was in charge. Sometime later, the company had a successful exit and I made out OK. I got lucky.
Now I find myself in my mid-30s, without any real structured experience in building a company & product, few marketable skills that'd only land me a junior position, no network to leverage, poor mental health, and worst of all: dreams of building something meaningful – dreams that I seem incapable of fulfilling.
I'm at wit's end and feeling hopeless. Most attempts to address these issues have been unsuccessful: years of therapists and medication have done little, and despite attempting to embrace some interests, fear and lack of motivation have prevented me from facing challenges and making decisions, etc.
All the while, friends my age and younger seem to be hitting their strides with purpose and energy. It feels like it'll take a decade before I'm in any reasonably healthy state to build something, which really doesn't seem worth it.
A decade from now, would you rather still be in a place where you're not reasonably healthy, and not able to build something? You're not at a good place. But if you want to go somewhere better, you have to start from where you are.
But I worry a bit about your focus on building something "meaningful". I mean, yes, working on something that matters is better than working on something that just makes some money. But I recently read Ecclesiastes, and it talks a lot about how futile and empty it is to build something that matters. It's never big enough or important enough or lasts long enough. If you chase it, it will never satisfy you.
Work on something that matters, but do it because it helps people, not because you need it to validate yourself.
I apologize if that comes across as too harsh. But I see a danger that I'm prone to, and I want you not fall into it.
You've just finished your first iteration. It went ok! Not as great as you might have hoped, but could be worse.
Look 10-15 years into the future... you'll be at the end of your second career. What does that look like? What are the steps to get there? How to you start today, from zero? Remember that it's ok to start from zero: you're now starting your second career. No matter what you do, 10 years from now you will be 10 years older. Since aging is inevitable you might as well make the best of it.
Your life is like a fruit tree: if you want tasty fruit, the absolute best time to plant that tree was 10 years ago. But the second-best time to plant that tree is today.