Sean, I have long admired your writing. What is interesting to me is that you posed an existential question and got a stunning array of advice of things to DO. You chose a new way of being and it was partially wonderful, with clear holes in it as well. You have chosen a more quiet introspective path, but it seems like you still have needs that external to You (excepting the gaming). You are more social than you may be getting right now.

But you may be in a process that is still unfolding.

You are certainly at the age which seems to elicit this reflection. Plus, you have made significant changes to your life, which have yet to fully settle in. There's a quote from the poet Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet, where he advises this guy about his restlessness and dissatisfaction. I read it for myself all the time

" So you must not be frightened...if a restiveness. like light and cloud-shadows passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall..." (the whole letter is great)

Forgive the shrink ness. I can't help myself.