First, sorry for the loss of your father. I lost my mother at 24, so have experience there and it is very hard.
This will sound cliché, so forgive me, but do you exercise regularly? Speaking from personal experience, when I feel some anxiety and depression coming on, exercise really helps. Sunlight (when I can get it) and exercise, particularly lifting weights, help me with my mood and confidence as well. Going to the gym may be fruitful in presenting just the social interaction you need too.
To answer your question from my perspective, you are NOT too old to turn things around and the best of your life could really be in front of you. If you are still interested in having children and family, that's not totally off the table either. My dear friend who is 47 just had his first children (twins) 4 years ago. I see a lot of people having kids and family later than the conventional 20's and 30's and seems to be working just fine!
I really think you should do these 5 things:
1. Talk to someone. A relative, friend, or therapist (there are online options if you can't get to something local).
2. Exercise regularly. Do something hard every day. I'm amazed at how well that helps my mood. I'm sick at the moment and haven't been able to in the last few days and can totally feel a massive difference.
3. Get back into that old hobby or find a new one. Put yourself out there and don't be afraid to try something new that you've put on the back burner.
4. Volunteer to serve somewhere. Go help out a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, animal shelter, etc.
5. Speaking of animals, get an animal if you can. Taking care of another living creature can help take the focus off of you.
Hope none of this sounds preachy. I really wish you the best and hope you find what makes you happy and content!
I was born 10 years earlier and had much of the same experience simply because that's when things started happening broadly on a consumer level with the internet. I used Flash professionally for several years developing ads, mini-games and silly animations. Actionscript (an ECMAscript implementation) was great. Javascript is just now catching up.
On behalf of all tech-minded Americans, I would like to say... I hate you.
I just got a notice in the mail that my ISP is "upgrading" their network so now I can pay $200 USD/month to get a whopping 2gbps, which I actually thought was pretty amazing until I read your post. So, thanks.
In all seriousness, congrats! You made a good case for why one would need that much bandwidth. Also, we need to catch up here. :)
You may be right. I never asked what they thought about poor people or the reasons they were poor. It would be a good conversation to have. Knowing what I know about some of those people, I would guess their response would be something along the lines of "It's possible for many people to earn and work their way up IF they make wise choices along the way and don't give up. It's not easy by any means."
The rich who had it handed to them likely wouldn't even have a thought like that cross their minds. It's more like "Oh... huh, poor people? Yeah, I don't know. What's poor?"
I agree that there are rich people who know little about what it's like to be poor or even middle class. But not all rich people were always rich.
I grew up poor, and was poor as a young adult. After working 2 jobs, going to school and trying to keep my family together on next to nothing, I was able to climb my way up and get to "middle class".
Despite being poor for a while, my kids were happy and they didn't know anything different. When we were able to finally afford cable, my oldest daughter couldn't believe she could watch cartoon network. It was the best feeling knowing that I was able to provide some level of comfort to my family without struggling every month to know how we were going to afford basic utilities and food.
We moved to an apartment near an affluent area where my kids would be able to go to a good school. There we met some very wealthy people. Casual conversations with these people regularly included topics such as going on vacation to Hawaii for a month, going to a ritzy steakhouse for dinner regularly, etc. I was surprised at how these people just expected others to be able to afford the same luxuries.
At the same time, I also met some wealthy people who didn't talk like that. After getting to know some of them, I learned that some actually earned their way there. They grew up poor, worked hard, went to school, worked harder, had some luck by being in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills, and eventually became wealthy.
What I learned during this time is that rich people are not always rich because someone handed it all to them. Some are very much in that category though. You can always tell by their conversations. Rich people who have never been poor or even middle class will converse about things casually that poor people can only dream about, while those who did not grow up rich reserve those conversation topics and are sensitive to other financial situations. This is why I think the 1% is a sliding scale to some extent. It's not a static group of people so we have to stop demonizing all rich people.