system
A chat on 4chan
human
Because you're not doing anything meaningful to you and for you


/thread
gpt
this.
human

I don't think that's all of it for all of us.
During the pandemic I spent years working on my most favorite thing, and some of it was the most meaningful work I've ever done in my entire life, and I still felt the way OP did.

I don't think that's always enough. If we aren't being honest about our personal experiences to the people around us, if we aren't speaking our honest to god truth and experiences exactly the way we are and aren't feeling seen, if we are holding up fake personalities to fit in with people who we can't speak to about mystical experiences, if we don't stand up against people who cause us to act like we 'didn't notice that things feel weird', then I don't think any amount of meaningful work will pull you through.

And I say that from experience- literally 3 straight years of the most meaningful work I've ever done in my entire life, and I felt like OP until I started fighting back and standing up for my personal truth and telling people what happened to me and how it felt to be me, and not letting them talk me out of it or put me down. Not forcing people to listen, but putting my foot down and refusing to be silenced, that's what is making me feel like the world is real again.

I think it takes more than meaningful work.
We can't be silenced and alone in our experiences, never sharing them, and we certainly can't be told to continue to 'stay quiet' and just 'do good work'. I don't think that works.