I've been feeling overwhelmed. I'm not sure what to do next. I think the overwhelmedness comes from too high of expectations for myself. I feel like my potential rate of doing stuff is pretty high, and I'm not living up to that.

Also I think that any particular thing I do isn't the most important thing, and I see a lot of value in doing the most important thing, so I try to think what that is, and that leads me to thinking what my goal is, and the harder I think about it, the further I deconstruct my motivations, and in the end, it seems like my motivations are sortof arbitrary.

I've tried to have the non-arbitrary goal of sortof helping the universe out in its apparent quest to have life and intelligence and consciousness develop. But this often leaves me feeling like a pawn.. like I'm helping, but not really helping, since my help isn't needed. Life would press on without me.

Another candidate of non-arbitrary goal is trying to become more conscious myself — this seems like it would be beneficial for both the universe and me, assuming it's beneficial to be more conscious, but I feel like it is. A problem with this goal is that there's a high chance of failure, like dying, which is likely to happen eventually, and also it's pretty hard to become more conscious. I feel like humanity will do better at this when we can combine brains with computers and with other brains, but in the meantime, I feel like some mysterious form of meditation may be my best bet, and even with that, it will be small beans compared with what technology will bring in the future, so what's the point in trying now?

Is this depression? Or is this what people feel when they're playing a game with their friends, and they realize they're going to lose, but they feel bad quitting now because their friends are enjoying the game?