Ask HN: About to turn 30. Any advice on how to deal with the depression?

I think you should do LSD.

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot

You’re 30, you have your whole life ahead of you and you greatest achievements are likely going to come from work you haven’t even thought of yet.

Identify what you truly enjoy, people you like to be with and set goals you want to aspire to. Make sure you spend your next 10 years focused on those things.

You are setting your expectations on marketed social norms which are pretty much meaningless. Who cares if you didn't go to parties? Being mature earlier is a bliss not a curse. Anyway check these out and good luck:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG1WzYaHQeh6LV3eFcdxR... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKM8n7mwq0&list=PLG1WzYaHQe...

Answering the question in the title is hard for me, but I can give you a side tip on this:

> I feel immense regret for a lot of things that I didn't do in my 20s.

First, it is natural to feel this way. It means you appreciate yourself and your time. Now, the past is past. No matter how much you think about what you did or didn't do, nothing will change your "lost time". The only thing you can change is your future, try to make better decissions using the wisdom you have gained.

Finally, if you fail to make the most out of your years to come, don't beat yourself. Failure is the basis for success. We all fail and we use the failures to succeed further down the road.

Also, keep a few close friends near you and love them :)

The number thirty seems like a big deal at the time. In hindsight it was a minor speedbump not much different than any other birthday. Thirties can be one of the most enjoyable times in life, with an open mind.

Don't beat yourself up. You can take a leave of absence or internship before completely dropping out. Take some time to try those things you think you missed out on. If after that, you may or may notfeel like returning to grad school. Some decisions take time and space to make.

I turn 30 in the summer. I feel immense regret for reasons I can’t really explain. I’ve been in the military (I felt like I belonged in the military more than any other place in life), I’ve had great jobs, made a lot of money, own a condo, am as “set” as I possibly could be at current job, have the ability to jump to other jobs.

Relationships haven’t been great, but also never really a problem or something I’ve overly desired. I do value some really close friends I’ve made through dating.

I don’t feel free.

You are still quite young, and you have plenty of time to correct those aspects of your life in which you feel deficient.

-- 61 yr-old guy

Remarkable research by Benjamin Hardy on the impact our environment has on the body/mind/spirit.

Rotate your environments-getting out of your rut by literally changing your physical surroundings throughout the day or week.

> https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35604684-willpower-do...

First, don't feel like you traded serious relationships for academia. A lot of younger relationships don't work because the people aren't grown up enough. (For me, I had to become less of an arrogant jerk. That took a bit of time.) So don't kick yourself, looking back and saying "I could have dated..." You could have, and you might have enjoyed it, but put your mental energy into chasing the relationship you're in now.

In fact, don't look back much. You want to learn from past mistakes, sure. But if you've had a car accident, and as you drive off you're staring in the rear-view mirror at the accident, you're going to have another one, because your attention is on the accident, not on your driving. Learn from the past, but put most of your attention on what you're doing now.

You sound unfulfilled in academia. It often is unfulfilling. But so is working in industry. Fulfillment isn't going to come from either of those places; both are ultimately empty. But fulfillment might come from your relationship. Don't sacrifice that for either a degree or a job. (Personally, I'd say that even a relationship isn't ultimately enough; real fulfillment comes from knowing God.)

But you didn't actually say that you were unfulfilled, you said that you'd never be appreciated. Do you need to be? You are unlikely to be, either in academia or in industry. (Again, though, you might be in your relationship.)

Oh, and in your title you said "depression". You're in grad school. It's amazing how high a percentage of grad students suffer from depression - like, 60+%. The depression isn't necessarily telling you that there's something wrong with you, or that you don't belong in academia. It's telling you that there's something fundamentally wrong with grad school. (Which, if you can't change it, may be telling you that academia isn't where you should be.)

No real conclusions, just some thoughts that you may or may not find useful...

Hey, I feel vaguely similar, although on a much milder basis. I go from starry eyed to quite a bit of regret and contempt. I am not happy with that, and I am working on it, at the same time it is what it is. I used to be simply starry eyed.

While I am no therapist, I know a thing or two about sacrifice, perhaps less than you, but enough to perhaps have a fun (or interesting/stimulating) chat about it.

If you're up for a Google Meet, feel free to email me (see my profile).

In one year you could revolutionize your life, if you really wanted it. Based on your comment this could be a reasonable 12 months plan:

- Get out of academia

- Get a 6 figure paying job in the industry

- Get out of your current relationship

- Rent a one bedroom apartment in a major city close to work and go on binge dating until the feeling of regret will be gone

It is likely that after taking all these steps you’d not be feeling depressed anymore, and life would have brought you in some interesting places.

I shared similar emotions in regards to dating in my mid 20s (specifically my girlfriend at the time had significantly more dating experience than me and that made me feel utterly inferior), so I did exactly that. I broke up with her, moved from the suburbs to a major city, and after casually dating ~50 women over the course of the following 4 years, I finally settled with my current partner and couldn’t be happier, we’ve been together 5 years and going strong. On top of that I have fun memories of my previous dating phase, which did a lot to boost my self confidence and tame any “missed out” feelings.

>I feel like I owe myself a lot, and even though I'm in a relationship now, I can't stop thinking about the opportunities that I missed with girls when I was younger.

If you love the someone you're with, you don't care about other opportunities. What would be the point? Some special organs that another person doesn't have? Keeping score of how many times you've got laid?

On the other hand, if you don't love someone, then it doesn't really matter if you get other opportunities - they're just empty fun for an hour or so but feeling empty afterwards.

Sure, it's cool to be a "player" for a little while in your late teens/early 20s, but it gets boring soon, just as the fun with alcohol and partying and many other things. Most of the people you know that 'did' go to parties and such, are dead bored of them at this age.

Also, is all this a real desire - things you really want to do today, or merely a response to a fear of having missed out? These two cases are not the same.

Lastly, you're just about to turn 30. You are still young, and can do anything you like to turn your life around. Heck, even someone at 40 or 50 could...

As for "transitioning to the industry" it's probably not a bad idea. Modern academia sucks, and unless you've made it somehow, it can be even more work and less pay than the industry. Heck, people make money even as nomads working remotely (and I'm not talking nomads making money by selling the nomad lifestyle: I mean people really working remotely from some city in Thailand and co, without vlogging about it). Plus, the modern industry (if we're talking IT) is hiring...

> I also think about dropping out of the PhD program and transitioning to the industry

Yes, do this. It’s a good start towards being happier. Academia is largely thankless BS and if you don’t already love it then you probably won’t ever.

Get yourself healthy, paid, entertained, etc. first - before you start running around trying to change the world and do meaningful stuff.

You won’t be of much use to anyone else until you’ve got yourself squared away.

Quit academia, it’s a black hole that will consume you and never reward you. Industry pays better and gives you more options. You are wasting 100s of thousand in opportunity costs by staying. You probably won’t discover anything great and even if you do you won’t get anything for it. Use your talent to make money use your money to live life.

> I also think about dropping out of the PhD program and transitioning to the industry, maybe because I feel like I'll never be appreciated in academia and maybe because I feel like I need a new beginning.

In my years in the industry, I have worked with several people who had finished their PhDs. Their PhD was only useful for one of them in one occasion, when our employer needed someone with a PhD to receive some state grant. Other than that, we solve the same problems with similar degrees of success. The only difference is that they are significantly older.

39.5 here: you're young. You might not believe it, but you actually are. Plenty of time to course-correct or even start over. Rather than finding coping mechanisms for the crippling depression of having arrived at an advanced age without accomplishment, go fix what you see as the problem(s) while you're still young enough to benefit maximally from the improvement.

dating got a lot more successful for me after I turned 30 so don't feel bad about missing out. Rather, start focusing on it now because you have some leveling up to do.

Industry is not a bad idea. But most crucially, the thing you feel is an identity slipping away. Academia has priesthoods, and so does industry. When you fall out of the fold, it can be a hard crash. People who can't find a fit tend towards taking odd jobs or a van down by the river. That's the real thing driving discontent at 30 - "I'm not making it, maybe I'm all washed up." But you are most likely done with priesthoods. Your second act looks different from your first.

Studying something of genuine interest is a crucial first step. It may be apparently trivial, in which case you call it "art". It may be of obvious import, and then it is "philosophy". The thing you study and the thing that brings in money may coincide, and that will make for a contented life for a time. But there will be little public indication that you might be succeeding at the personal journey. You must create your own rubrics and principles of operation.

Some may say I "wasted" my 20s- changing majors, dropping out of school, going back, trying 3 different careers, multiple countries. When I turned 30, I was in deep debt (student loans + credit cards), a year or so into my 4th career and a few years into a marriage that I couldn't admit wasn't going to work out. Some of my friends were years into their careers, financially successful, some already had kids, I felt like I was woefully behind and would never catch up.

Fast forward and by my late 30s I'm debt free, make more money that I ever imagined, in a wonderful 2nd marriage, my 4th career turned out to be perfect for me and everything is on track. A lot can change in a few years, if things are not working now, doesn't mean they won't work in the future. Explore, learn about yourself and others, take calculated risks and keep going.

Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both -- Kirkegaard

Go outside more. Exercise to exhaustion. Stop feeding negative thought patterns. Have fun.

Learn from it. Otherwise you're going to experience these same regrets when you're about to turn 40, 50, 60, 70, ...

Figure out your goals/principles/mission today. Then make that happen now.

There's never going to be a right time to do anything other than now. Because you're never going to be any younger.

/u/poem_for_your_sprog

  I should have hurried youth, in truth,
  And moved more quickly on -
  I should have made the most of youth,
  Before the time was gone.
  
  I should have followed fancy, free,
  Before it thought to fade -
  I should have picked a good degree,
  Or found myself a trade.

  I should have stopped to stare above;
  To share another's dreams -
  I should have never welcomed love,
  And lost it all, it seems.
  
  No matter what the aim or end -
  No matter what you do -
  Regrets are part of life, my friend:
  Don't let them conquer you