Comment by antman

Using the correct words such as "gratitude" but pretty much missing the point. I no place do you mention you took help or how it affected your pre startup personal life.

If one doesn't have principles based on life meaning, optimizing metrics is a good way of calming down your urges but it the end it does not work. How can you tell it doesn't work? Simply because your feedback loop stops giving you the dopamine response you expect and you need to escalate just to calm down. Far away travels, dangerous actions, more expensive stuff even tried to get into an DOGE without even knowing what the problem with DOGE -smart- thinkers is because philosophy, political science or history apparently hasn't been your life's focus. You still consider it important, that it was a very intelligent group they allowed you in, without figuring out what was wrong with their whole premise. It would be apparent to a first year social sciences student, someone who has visited a Tesla factory o to someone from a country with a sizeable functioning government that has not been a victim of corporate capture for decades.

Money is important, but if I were I would beg my girlfriend back if it was a relationship of feelings, try to reconnect with some friends and family that were probably lost during this multi year grind, people you will be considering as boring because no dopamine. Ask then how they are doing, play with their kids see why they are not boring. Read some Gabor Mate and Irvin Yalom and have just one main goal: Being able after 2-3 years to lie down in the grass for a couple of hours,doing nothing, just looking at the stars, being calm without your nervous system randomly spiking and pushing you towards chaos. Talk to people who don't know you are rich, try to learn from them. Avoid extreme environments.

Currently you describe a nervous system that seems to be taking important decisions for meaningless actions which you then rationalize. Not admitting any mistakes, not failing since there were no goals in the first place other than grinding.

I know that, been there, done that, I am still there, I am not getting out anytime soon either. There are many people in that status, that is not special either.