Thanks MonkeyJenga, I think you've put your finger on why it felt like I wasn't making any progress here.
Skyhigh, it seems to me like you're shifting what you are unhappy about as people propose solutions to different apparent complaints. That's a pattern I've seen enough from people in my field to know it's a frequent phenotypic marker for depression. (They start from feeling unhappy and then try to identify potential causes for why they feel unhappy. If a particular cause turns out not to make sense or be easily addressable, they'll shift to something else, because after all, they really do genuinely feel extremely unhappy and down).
Obviously I'm not a therapist, and even if I was one I couldn't diagnosis someone over the internet. But it couldn't hurt to schedule a time to go in for a checkup (just like you probably stop by your regular physician every year or two to make sure everything is in working order), right?
....
Because I am expressing some dissatisfaction with my situation does not necessarily mean that I am depressed. Perhaps I have some genuine issues that others here may encounter? Maybe my experience should be considered? What if my position needs to be seen as false and a reason needs to be created?
I dislike that you are misrepresenting my statement. Note that 1) I did not state you were depressed 2) the reason I suggested that you should consider that you
may be depressed was not that you were expressing some dissatisfaction with your life but because you constantly shift your explanation for being unhappy whenever anyone proposes a way to address one of the several issues you have stated in different posts to be the reason you are unhappy and dismissed any and all suggestions for how you might improve either your situation or state of mind.
I also dislike that you present depression as being mutually exclusive with facing genuine issues. Many depressed people also face significant challenges in life. You don't get to hand wave away all those other challenges just because they are also depressed.
But anyway, in the context of our discussion the latter is a side issue.
1) If you want to continue to be unhappy and unsatisfied with your life, keep doing what you are doing.
2) If you don't, I propose you devise some approaches to try to change your life (you have a range of suggestions from this thread, but obviously you know your situation best so maybe you can think of something even more effective).
3) If you won't do anything to try to be happy/satisfied again because you feel powerless and hopeless and that no change you make is ever going to lead to you feeling happy/satisfied again, yes that would be quite consistent with depression.
Those are basically the three options any of us face when we feel the way that you sound like you do. FIRE or no FIRE.