This happened to me last year. It was incredibly difficult working my way back up but I have been working a job since a year and am out of debt.
The grief/toll will take time to go away. Mine has still not gone away but it gets better as time passes. Suggest that you seek help for this with a professional therapist. Meet new people and have different experiences. That helps a lot.
I don't think the writer is being fair here because he is putting the lab-leak theory in the same category as the moon landing hoax. I don't think the situation is that simple. Both zoonotic and lab-leak are hypotheses and the evidence will slowly start pointing towards one of them. Why try to take a stand when one doesn't know enough?
Try making some art. You can use art apps to remix old photos and also to generate completely new pieces.
Not sure about iOS, but on Android there are fantastic apps like Glitch Lab, Mirror Lab, and so on. Here is a link to art made on Android using Mirror Lab: https://www.instagram.com/mirror_lab/
You might want to give Org mode (in emacs) a try. It was actually created to quickly take notes in a structured way. Emacs can seem intimidating but you will need very less time to learn the basics, especially if your goal is to just use org mode for note-taking. Link: orgmode.org
I scan HN once in the morning and before going to sleep. I save interesting links to pocket and then listen to them at 1.5x speed during my commute or free time. BTW Pocket's TTS has definitely gotten better now barring a few obvious errors. The experience is largely good.
As a consequence of growing up in a diverse and multicultural society like India, I am fluent in 4 languages (English, Hindi, Marathi and Konkani). I am currently learning French from Duolingo and Kannada from a language book that I purchased sometime back.
Coming to your question, there seems to be no right way to learn a language except for selecting a learning resource and diving straight into it. Some languages are easy and some are quite hard but the trick seems to be in getting familiar with the initial phrases and then learning the grammatical rules. Grammatical and syntactical rules are like the glue that hold the words in place and I would advise you to focus on them. Talking to people who speak the language (can be quite awkward for the beginner) and reading passages aloud will end up helping you as well.
There is no timeline to this and getting fluent in a language is a function of your efforts and the difficulty of the language you have chosen. If the language that you want to learn is on Duolingo, that's the best place to start.
Grateful for your hard work on this, Brent and team.