I think your problem is the crisis du jour, the 'hollow men' of our times. At its heart lies multitasking and sensory overload. With the barrage of modern tech/media, it's become so easy to tune into many little bits of nothing for hours/days/years (surfing the web, watching video, fiddling with your phone, hacking the web) that time passes effortlessly and invisibly. Eventually you look up and realize you're a decade older.
One way to deal with this is similar to how people meditate: 1) focus on being aware of nothing, or 2) focus on being aware of everything (while not becoming distracted). Either way, employing single-minded attentiveness will reboot your brain and help you generate your own thoughts again. A sense of purpose can arise only after you stop being distracted by the trivial racket of the world outside.
To begin, sit and do nothing for as long as it takes, til you get antsy enough that you just have to do something. Whatever that something is, it rose to the top of your list of stuff you felt the need to do, so that alone makes it important. So act on it. If later you run out of ideas again, then sit down and return to doing nothing until the cluelessness passes.
But whatever you do, DON'T mindlessly tune in, and STOP doing ten things at once. Those paths lead nowhere.
Losing want, is good. Many people strive and yearn for this.
Now that you know you don't want/expect anything out of life, you are in a position where you can serve humanity. You'd probably die tomorrow/next week/next year/next decade. You don't know. It's your duty to leave this place in a better state than you found it in. Assuming you have some skills that can help others, pass them on. Volunteer. Tutor. Plant trees. Build schools/shelters. Teach middle school math/science. Try to evoke the sense of wonder in engineering/software/physics in children, the same wonder that you saw in these fields once. Don't do it with the expectation that it would make you happy. It might not. Do it because you have to. Do it because there are millions of people who would give anything to trade places with you.
Take a break, spend some time somewhere nice and quiet– like a faraway beach, and sit for hours and see what comes to your mind. You're bound to be curious about something, interested in something. Day to day life has a way of wearing that down in people– we get so caught up in our obligations and our bills and such that we forget what we're curious about, what we're interested in.
Once you figure out what you're curious about, throw yourself into learning everything you can.
That, and serve others. Volunteer. Ask yourself– what do you wish you had when you were a kid, that you didn't? What do you know now that you wish you knew before? Then seek out people who're struggling with that problem, and help them. It feels good.
In the tragedy of the commons, the person with the shortest time preference wins. I desire long-term goals like college funds for the children and retirement funds for the parents. The spouse always desires a house with one more room in it than the one we currently occupy, a vehicle newer than the ones we currently drive, furniture more comfortable and attractive than that which we currently own.
For a full decade, I have spent nearly nothing upon my own interests. I dare not spend even $5 for a fast-food sandwich, for fear that $5 will add to "our" debts. I find that my interests have waned, and my ambition has withered. What good is wanting that which you cannot have? Why take a risk when you can realize no benefit from the reward?
Then I realized that this is what it must be like to live in poverty. Desire begets misery. Merely existing incurs debt. The only treatment for the despair is apathy, but that is like taking heroin for a headache.
But now that I no longer care about anything, now that I have stuffed all my dreams into a sack and thrown them in the river to drown, now that I no longer feel pleasure in anything that am able to do myself, I have fallen into the trap of nihilism. Everything is pointless, including attempts to become a non-nihilist.
It's too late for us. Our only purpose now is to serve as a cautionary tale for others. The lesson to be learned is to never allow the course of your life to be directed by others, or you will lose the ability to direct it yourself.
I did, of course, tell a teensy little lie previously in this post. I have discovered a passionate desire to write fiction, and take pleasure in devising schemes by which the system of the world may be altered to become less cruel to those subjected to it.
Just force yourself to try new things until the things you do no longer seem obligatory. Just yesterday, I saw a video on YouTube where the subject, who had miniscule pedagogical talent, demonstrated the creation of a longbow in ten minutes, using less than $10 in materials that are readily available from any home improvement store. Longbows are largely obsolete. Why would anyone make one from modern materials? You can't even use something like that for historical reenactments. You can buy bows made from modern materials that work better for hunting or target shooting. Why would you make a video of yourself making one?
The answer to all those irrelevant questions is that this guy likes making bows, and he wants to share his enjoyment with others. You and I can also do that, no matter what it is we do.
How the hell did he even figure out that he liked doing that? Making bows is hardly a commonplace activity. Apparently, he just did something that he had never done before, and simply kept on doing it. Stop counting days and start doing things. Anything.
It gives me some sense of satisfaction that I can write such a convincing representation of such a person. But then I get sucked into a philosophical discussion with myself about whether authors can accurately depict characters with personality traits that they do not themselves possess. And that makes me worried that I might be depressed and in self-denial about it.
The facts remain that ancestor post needs to do something not part of the ordinary routine, and that I ought to finish that first book instead of posting on HN.
What if I am not interested in anything? I don't really want anything; I think that drive of wanting stuff has all but dried up in the past 5 years.
I'm wasting my life away counting days. What now?